ELECTIONS / LOS ANGELES MAYOR : Wachs, Katz Spar Over Plan to Break Up Schools

With the voter-rich San Fernando Valley in their political cross-hairs, two top mayoral candidates sharply disagreed Saturday on how to make the huge Los Angeles Unified School District more responsive to students and parents.

In a two-hour debate, City Councilman Joel Wachs argued for a plan to split up the school system into half a dozen or more districts, a proposal backed by a medley of liberal and conservative Valley legislators.

Meanwhile, Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City) urged support for a school reform plan, advocated by a blue-ribbon panel of educators, that would keep the district intact while giving more power over the schools to local parent-teacher councils.

During their dust-up on commentator Bill Press’ KFI-AM radio program, the two candidates also clashed over law enforcement, term limits, campaign reform and the economy.

A frequent Katz refrain Saturday was that Wachs was part of a failed city government. “Where have you been? What have been doing for 20 years?” Katz said as he maintained that the size of the police force has not kept pace with crime.

Just as hotly, Wachs implied that Katz was a flunky of status quo-loving special interests, including labor unions. “Unions, which are such a large part of your campaign, have resisted change,” Wachs said at one point as he challenged whether Katz truly favored privatizing city services.

Valley-based lawmakers Wachs and Katz are among a handful of top-seeded mayoral candidates. As of Saturday, 32 people had declared their intentions to run for the city’s top elective office, including Councilmen Michael Woo and Ernani Bernardi, ex-school board member Julian Nava and transit commissioner Nikolas Patsaouras.

But the issue of school reform held center stage at Saturday’s debate. Both men acknowledged that the mayor has no legal authority over city schools, but said a mayor can use the office to influence school policy.

Wachs kicked up a citywide ruckus earlier this week when he urged the City Council to join him in supporting state legislation--most conspicuously championed by state Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys), to split up the district.

Wachs’ move forced the other mayoral candidates to show their hands on the issue.

Put on the defensive by the Wachs initiative, a popular idea in the Valley, Katz on Saturday signaled his support for what he called the “fairly radical” school reform plan backed by LEARN, a private group of educators set up two years ago to study city schools.

Among other things, the LEARN plan calls for giving school-based councils of teachers and parents greater control over the curriculum and hiring decisions at their neighborhood schools, Katz said. “It’s a model I like,” he said.

The school district breakup plan also could Balkanize a city already beset by the centrifugal pull of disparate geographic and ethnic forces, Katz warned. “We need a citywide structure,” he said. “This is a city. This isn’t Eastern Europe.”

But the LEARN plan “doesn’t go far enough” to decentralize power, Wachs said. And its recommendations for education reform, albeit good, are unlikely to be adopted by the existing district power structure anyway, Wachs said. “The vested interests will not allow the LEARN proposals to come about.”

Wachs also denied that the breakup plan might produce smaller districts made up of ethnic enclaves.

Existing school busing programs to promote integration and relieve overcrowding in inner-city schools might continue on an inter-district basis even after dissolution, Wachs said.

“So you’d still bus kids?” Katz asked. If that’s what people wanted, they would have that choice, Wachs replied.

Under questioning by Press and listeners, the pair squabbled over other issues.

For example, Wachs said he opposed two measures that will be on the April 20 ballot to limit the terms of city officials. Katz, on the other hand, said he supported them, while acknowledging that he had once opposed term limits for state legislators.

Both men also laid claim to having created local jobs. Katz, a leader on state transportation issues, said that his transit programs have created 17,000 new jobs in the Los Angeles area in the past two years.

Wachs, meanwhile, noted that he had fought to block the award of a $121.8-million mass-transit rail car contract to Sumitomo Corp. of America, a Japanese concern.

Much of the feverish opposition to that contract arose from a concern that local transit money was not going to U.S. firms. During the controversy, Mayor Tom Bradley singled out Wachs and another vocal critic of the Sumitomo contract to accuse them of creating a “dangerous hysteria” against Japanese.