Valley Councilmen Favor Breakup of District : Schools: Joel Wachs and Hal Bernson want the council to promote secession from L.A. Unified. Sen. David A. Roberti backs the plan but warns it could take years.

The Los Angeles City Council should promote the breakup of the huge Los Angeles Unified School District, two San Fernando Valley-based councilmen said Friday, even as a powerful state legislator from the Valley warned that such a task could take many years.

The comments by Councilmen Hal Bernson and Joel Wachs and Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) reflected the growing support by Valley politicians for a movement to secede from the Los Angeles district and establish a separate Valley district.

Roberti, the state Senate leader, told a news conference that breaking up the Los Angeles district would be his top priority during the remaining two years of his career in the Legislature.

“I’m going to try to get this done in two years,” Roberti said, but he added that the challenge is so much bigger than he envisioned that it may have to be completed by a legislator who will remain in office after Roberti leaves.

Roberti, who until last June represented a Hollywood-based district, now represents a district based in Van Nuys and has become the chief Senate backer of the move to break up the sprawling Los Angeles school district. The district is so vast that it is not accountable to students and their parents, taxpayers and policy makers, Roberti contended.

Bernson, who represents the northwest Valley, remarked in a council meeting Friday that he plans to ask City Atty. James K. Hahn to explore ways in which the council could help with the breakup.

Wachs, an East Valley representative who is now running for mayor, later announced that he and Bernson will hold a news conference Tuesday to discuss their plans for splitting the district--a 723-school behemoth that is the second largest in the country, with a $3.8-billion budget and 641,000 students spread from San Pedro to Sylmar. The district has been battered by budget cutbacks in recent years and now a faces a possible teachers strike.

Breaking up the district “is the hottest issue around,” Bernson said in an interview, calling the current setup “a farce.”

“I want to know what authority the council has in this area,” he said. “I believe we can do something to make it happen.”

Although he declined to say who he consulted on the point, Bernson said it was his understanding the council has the authority either to hold a secession election in the Valley or, simpler still, to pass a resolution to dissolve the existing school district.

Most legal and political observers, however, have predicted that breaking up the district would be a long and complicated process. Members of the Valley-based secession movement are looking to state lawmakers like Roberti to pass special legislation allowing them to bypass formidable procedural and administrative requirements imposed by county educational authorities.

But historically, breakaway efforts by Valley lawmakers have failed in the Legislature.

Roberti told reporters that multiple tiers of complicated state law have developed over the years that make the governing of education in California so esoteric and complex that few people--except highly paid professional consultants--can understand it.

These professionals, often former education bureaucrats at the state and local levels, deliberately make the governing process complicated to preserve their livelihoods, Roberti said.

“There’s a cottage industry of consultants and these people are going to fight to maintain the complexity,” he said. “This is how they keep their jobs for life. The vested interests in education finance and organization have complicated our system so much . . . without a thought as to the impact this is going to have on public school kids.”

Roberti said he has not yet decided what type of reorganization bill he will introduce. He said it may simply create two districts, including one in the Valley. Or, he said, it may call for many smaller districts, or may try to eliminate the many legal and procedural roadblocks that discourage breaking up large school districts.

That would fit with Wachs’ approach. More than allowing the Valley alone to secede, Wachs wants to give numerous communities throughout Los Angeles the opportunity to split off, said Greg Nelson, the councilman’s chief deputy.

Los Angeles school board member Mark Slavkin said Roberti, Bernson and Wachs are the forerunners of political leaders he expects to join the Valley school secession movement as it gathers strength.

“As the momentum builds to split the district. . . and it is building . . . I think a lot of elected officials at all levels will begin rushing to stake out some turf,” Slavkin said.

“I think it’s important to talk about what specific goals we’re trying to achieve to help students succeed academically.”

Slavkin said he favors an even more radical approach--eliminating the school board entirely and putting power and state school funds directly into the hands of parents, teachers and principals “instead of creating more school boards, bureaucracy and unions.”