Wachs Joins Movement to Break Up School District : Education: The councilman seeks support for his mayoral bid from Valley proponents of the plan, which critics say would add to the city’s ethnic strains.

The question of abolishing the Los Angeles Unified School District landed center stage in the mayor’s race Tuesday with Councilman Joel Wachs solidly joining the bandwagon on breaking up the district, a move that some say promotes the city’s already troubling strains of ethnic divisiveness.

“This is going to be a big issue in the mayor’s race,” said Latino educational activist Marshall Diaz moments after Wachs and Councilman Hal Bernson introduced a motion urging the council to put its Sacramento lobbyists to work supporting state legislation to split up the second-largest district in the nation.

An aide to one mayoral contender called Wachs’ plan irresponsible, a second candidate said it was worth studying, and a third candidate said that, although he did not support splitting up the district, he favored giving the San Fernando Valley a larger voice in school affairs.

Wachs’ call for dividing Los Angeles Unified, perhaps into five to seven jurisdictions, echoes what has already emerged as a central theme of his campaign--promoting the power and autonomy of local communities.

The Valley lawmaker has said he would appoint dozens of local panels to help with City Hall decision-making if he is elected mayor. With his new initiative, Wachs is clearly seeking to harness to his own political campaign the Valley-based forces already battering LAUSD.

Leaders from across the city, Wachs said at a City Hall news conference, are deeply concerned about the school system. “There’s no question that, by virtue of its massive size and bureaucracy . . . that it is unresponsive and unmanageable and in desperate need of reform.”

South-Central businessman Celes King, a prominent black Republican and head of the statewide Congress of Racial Equality, said that he was inclined to back Wachs’ proposal and that he has sent Wachs a letter of support. However, King said the issue “is going to be a hard-sell in the black community.”

Councilwoman Rita Walters, a former Los Angeles school board member who has championed black causes, has called the breakup plan a step toward the “ghettoization” of the city.

Meanwhile, the campaign manager for state Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City), another mayoral candidate, called Wachs’ proposal “crazy” and “flat-out irresponsible,” because it does not offer a concrete replacement.

“There’s got to be a real concern in my community that it won’t be fair to kids in our community,” said Peter Taylor, who is black. Katz could not be reached for comment in Washington, where he is attending events for the presidential inauguration. “You create tension. . . . They’re inflaming an issue,” Taylor said.

Even so, Taylor said Katz might support splitting up the district if a workable plan is put forward.

However, Councilman Michael Woo, another mayoral candidate who has been trying to patch together a broad-based ethnic coalition behind his campaign, was less critical.

“I think it’s worth looking at,” Woo said. “I’m studying a number of options myself. The decline of public education is one of the main category of questions I get asked by people from throughout the city, from rich and poor areas. And in the Valley, the breakup of the school system is one of the prime solutions that’s favored.”

On Saturday, mayoral candidate Richard Riordan took a more cautious view. Riordan said he would not back the breakup of the district but would support a proposed ballot initiative to undo last summer’s school redistricting plan and, thus, restore power to the Valley.

LAUSD acting Supt. Sid Thompson said he is not sure “smaller means better schools.” “There are a lot of small and mid-sized districts that are also having troubles,” he said.

“Mixed up in this is a whole lot of ethnic tribalism,” Thompson said, even as he acknowledged that many supporters of dissolution are sincere about education reform.

“I’m not ready to say at all the advocates are racist--I don’t want to lump everybody together,” he said. “But many of them are concerned about kids who are being bused and kids who are recent immigrants. That’s mixed in with this.”

Cecelia Mansfield, a vice president of the Valley-based 31st District Parents, Teachers and Students Assn., which is supporting the initiative to overturn the redistricting plan, said her group is receptive to the idea of breaking up the district if it is done in a manner that does not hurt minority or inner-city children.

Wachs’ school plan is likely to play well in the voter-rich Valley, long a hotbed of secessionist sentiment and the main target of Wachs’ campaign. About 40% of the city’s registered voters live in the Valley.

Wachs denied that his plan would encourage existing forces pulling at the city’s center. “This is not about secession,” he said. “It’s about empowerment. It’s about local control over local schools and tax dollars. It’s not just about the Valley, it’s about every community that wants to have a say in their schools.”

Wachs was joined by Bernson, who also pledged to get a quick opinion from City Atty. James K. Hahn on what power the city may have over the dimensions of the school district, which has 641,000 students and a $3.8-billion budget.

County education officials said the city does not have the power to change the school district’s configuration.

Passages relating to the district are in the city’s charter, making it a so-called “charter city school district,” but those portions deal only with “the time and manner” of elections and with redrawing school board boundaries after every census, said Marc Forgy, secretary to the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization.

City lawmakers have no jurisdiction over what communities make up the school district as a whole, said Forgy, whose committee oversees any alteration of district composition throughout the county.

However, state legislation--which state Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) has promised to introduce by the end of next month--can bypass the district reconfiguration procedures that have been set up in the state Education Code.

Times staff writer Henry Chu contributed to this story.