School District for Valley Is Opposed : Education: Activists say minorities would suffer. Sen. Roberti plans bill early in ’93 to allow secession.

Reacting to a promise by a top state lawmaker to fight for creation of a separate San Fernando Valley school district, activists representing political, educational and parent interests throughout the city charged Thursday that secession would harm minority students without producing the radical restructuring Los Angeles schools need.

State Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) reiterated Thursday that he intends to introduce a bill by the end of next February to clear the way for the Valley to separate from the mammoth Los Angeles Unified School District.

But Roberti, who had announced his support to a meeting of Valley parents Wednesday night, cautioned that “an awful lot of conversations . . . have to take place” first to gauge public opinion and answer difficult questions surrounding school integration and redistribution of property and students.

“We have to put it on the fast track,” said Roberti, the powerful president pro tem of the Senate. “However, before I put it in, I want to talk to a lot of people--obviously education activists in the Valley, but for that matter in the rest of the district as well, because it affects them, too.”

But several school board members, the teachers union, Latino activists and some parents have already criticized the proposed split as an imperfect or even invidious solution to the problems of a giant district that now serves 640,000 students over an area of 708 square miles.

“It is a simplistic bumper-sticker approach to a very complex set of issues,” said Los Angeles school board member Mark Slavkin.

For many--though by no means all--Latinos, a Valley withdrawal would appear to reverse gains made this summer in increasing their power on the Los Angeles school board.

A reapportionment plan adopted in July gave heavily Latino neighborhoods control over a second seat on the board. But the change met with vociferous opposition from Valley residents, who contended that the Valley will suffer from being carved up among four representatives, only one of whom is responsible to Valley voters alone.

The redistricting flap revived the movement to break up the Los Angeles school district--an idea that has been discussed for 30 years.

Marshall Diaz, chairman of the Latino Redistricting Coalition, said that although he favors local autonomy over schools, a Valley school board would be controlled primarily by Anglo voters. No Latino representation could be ensured, he said, and the needs of Latino students--who would still form a majority in a Valley district--could go ignored.

“This whole issue about breaking up could take power away from us. . . . They’re going to dilute our power that we have legally established” on the current Board of Education, Diaz said. “We’re going to oppose this legislation.”

“Coming on the heels of redistricting, a lot of it’s racially motivated,” added Art Barragan, president of the Valley chapter of the Assn. of Mexican-American Educators.

Robert L. Scott, head of a new coalition devoted to the breakaway effort, denied that the campaign was a maneuver to reduce Latino political clout.

“There’s no move afoot to try to change the basic formula of avoiding fragmentation of minority communities,” Scott said. “Everything would be done to allow for the maximization of minority representation.”

But others describe his group’s goal of a separate district as a cosmetic solution that would not achieve the radical reform they say is necessary for real change. A Valley district of about 190,000 students and 177 schools would still be the state’s second largest and, some say, would simply create its own bloated bureaucracy unresponsive to the needs of individual schools.

“This doesn’t go far enough in decentralizing the district,” said Pam Bruns, an active parent on the Westside, where there has also been occasional talk of forming a separate district. “As long as your system is so large as not to be comprehensible, how do you have any accountability? You have to have a manageably sized school district that’s comprehensible to the laymen out there--the parents and the teachers in that school system.”

“It’s more than just smaller units,” said Mike Roos, head of LEARN, a coalition of business, school and community leaders hoping to overhaul the Los Angeles school system. “You have to absolutely restructure the way you deliver education.”

Officials of United Teachers-Los Angeles also voiced opposition to secession.

“UTLA’s position all along has been to keep the district whole and restructure it,” union spokeswoman Catherine Carey said. “That’s where we’ve been since Day 1. . . . Even if you break up into 10 small districts, it doesn’t change anything if they run them the same way--top down with heavy bureaucracy and centralized services.

“We would like to see vast decentralization of this district and much more authority at the school site level. We want change that’s systemic.”

A feeling of local ownership of schools is crucial, said Board of Education member Roberta Weintraub, who advocates splintering the Los Angeles district into 11 to 20 smaller entities.

“There are many ways of breaking the district up, and I encourage that a study be done on which is the most effective way to do it,” she said.

Only one school board member has publicly endorsed creation of a separate Valley district alone, Julie Korenstein--whose political base is in the Valley but whose district was dismembered by the reapportionment.

Others, like Weintraub, have expressed support for a more dramatic reorganization, which could be hastened by the Los Angeles district being declared bankrupt as early as next week, triggering a county and state takeover. Advocates of breaking up the district are expected to argue that cutting it into smaller entities would help solve its financial problems.

A “breakup will come as a result of insolvency,” predicted school board President Leticia Quezada, who declined to support or oppose such a split.

Backers of Valley secession hope that the special legislation Roberti promised to introduce will allow them to bypass formidable administrative and procedural requirements by county and state authorities that determine school district configuration. If pursued through the usual channels, for example, a split would first have to receive the approval of the Los Angeles school board itself--which some observers say is very unlikely.

But critics of the Valley effort say its proponents still have to address the thorny questions that a breakup will entail. One problem will be the equitable division of billions of dollars in property, thousands of employees and mounds of unpaid bills.

Also, legal experts say the cause could run aground on the issue of desegregation. Supporters of the secession effort point out that a separate Valley school system would have only a 27% Anglo enrollment, saying it thus could be integrated within itself. However, the split could be challenged in court because the secession would cause Anglo enrollment in the remaining Los Angeles district to drop from 13% to 7.4%.

Scott said a Valley district would continue busing in students from the Los Angeles district to maintain the current overall ethnic distribution. But attorneys familiar with desegregation cases said that busing between two districts could resurrect past efforts to create a far-ranging metropolitan desegregation plan. Such a plan was vigorously opposed in 1979 by suburban communities, such as Santa Monica, which have their own school systems.

NEXT STEP

State Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) has announced that he will sponsor special legislation--probably by the end of next February--aimed at enabling the San Fernando Valley to break away from the Los Angeles Unified School District. According to a Roberti aide, public hearings on the issue have been scheduled for Jan. 22 and 29, probably with one to be held in the Valley and the other in downtown Los Angeles.

SCHOOL DISTRICTSCHANGING BOUNDARIES

The established route for reconfiguring school districts--which backers of a separate San Fernando Valley district hope to skirt via special legislation--involves a host of requirements set forth by county and state educational authorities.

According to the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization, any change in school district configuration must meet nine criteria before the committee will approve the proposal and send it to the State Board of Education:

* All districts, old and new, must have an adequate number of students.

* All districts are organized on the basis of a substantial community identity.

* The property and facilities of the original district or districts will be equitably divided.

* The reorganization will not promote racial or ethnic discrimination or segregation.

* It will not substantially increase state costs.

* It will not significantly disrupt educational programs and will promote sound educational performance.

* It will not result in a significant increase in school facility costs.

* It is not primarily designed to result in a significant increase in property values because territory was transferred from one school district to an adjoining district.

* It will not cause additional financial problems for the new districts or any other districts.