Breakup of L.A. Schools Stirs Debate at Hearing : Education: Minority groups say the plan to dismantle the district is motivated by racism. But the proposal is endorsed by mayoral hopeful Richard Riordan.

While critics branded it a racist scheme that would waste tax money, proponents of a plan to dismantle the mammoth Los Angeles school district won the endorsement Tuesday of a prominent mayoral candidate and heard a proposal by state education officials to create 30 smaller districts out of the sprawling, 640,000-student system.

The heated debate came during an unusual daylong “informational” hearing called by the state Senate Education Committee at the Museum of Science and Industry. Although there was no legislation to consider and no votes taken, the meeting was important because it was the first opportunity for community leaders, parents, school officials and officeholders to formally address the plan to break up the school district.

Senate President Pro Tempore David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) asked for the hearing as a way to test support for the plan, which he favors. Underscoring its importance, 14 legislators flew down from Sacramento for the type of hearing that, on a good day, would draw three.

Even before the panel was called to order, lawmakers received an earful from an angry coalition of minority groups and local officials who complained that the proposal was motivated by the same conservative Anglo forces that fought court-ordered busing in the 1970s.

Echoing those sentiments was Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), one of the most outspoken critics of the Roberti plan. After hours of testimony, she looked out from the stage of the museum’s auditorium and said: “I see the same alignment that I did in the ‘70s, when I was the only person of color sitting on the school board and we were talking about integration. I see and hear the same arguments today, Feb. 2, 1993.

“It’s going to be a battle of class and a battle of race,” she said. “And if anyone thinks it’s any different, I want them to come and tell me here.”

Watson and other opponents of the breakup contend that allowing areas such as the San Fernando Valley to form their own school districts would worsen racial segregation and could leave inner-city students with less money, the most inexperienced teachers and the oldest schools. Board President Leticia Quezada said a Valley secession would slice the number of white students in the district from 13% to 7%.

But Roberti and his backers, principally Valley residents, maintained that the accusations of racism were moot--because the Valley is largely minority--and their goal was to make the second-largest public school system in the country more responsive to the needs of all students and parents.

“Have we forgotten that the ‘P’ in PTA means Parents-Teachers Assn.?” Roberti said in his opening remarks. “Parents have to be part of education and they cannot feel so removed from a behemoth, which is the Los Angeles Unified School District. . . . .”

Roberti’s cause received a boost from two sources. One was mayoral hopeful Richard Riordan, who testified that he had met with the Senate leader Friday and supports dismantling the district into jurisdictions of “no more than 25 schools.”

The statement surprised some of Roberti’s opponents, who were hoping to blunt the dismantling drive by advancing a rival reform plan that would drastically decentralize the existing district by transferring power from the district’s bureaucracy to principals and teachers.

The decentralization plan is the product of LEARN, a 2-year-old coalition of business, education and civic leaders--and Riordan had been one of its major backers. His testimony Tuesday that the reforms don’t preclude the breakup of the district drew an angry rebuke from Sen. Teresa P. Hughes (D-Los Angeles), who chided the mayoral candidate by saying she was “very disappointed” in his statements.

“Mr. Riordan, I want you to eat your words,” she said. “I want you to think about what you’re saying because I don’t know if what you’re saying is what you mean.”

Hughes and other lawmakers who are sympathetic to the district also criticized a proposal by Bob Agee, a Department of Education deputy superintendent, that LAUSD be split into as many as 30 districts, consisting of 15,000 to 25,000 students. Each proposed district would encompass two comprehensive high schools and its feeder schools.

Districts of that size, Agee said, are large enough for “economies of scale” in administrative costs and purchasing power, but small enough to allow for parental involvement. Under sharp questioning, Agee said the recommendation was developed by seven or eight members of the department’s management team.

Outside the committee room, Roberti said Riordan’s statement and the department’s recommendation were “terribly important” in boosting his cause.

Opponents used the hearing to hammer at the potential legal and fiscal problems of breaking up the district.

Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) said splintering the district would create duplication of payroll and maintenance services. It would beg questions about what to do with indebtedness from bonds, how to collect developers’ fees, what schools to close and what to do with the busing program.

“In our rush to rhetoric, we have to be thinking more fiscally responsible--not what our color is but if there’s enough green in our pockets to subsidize this change in the first place,” he said.

But the issue of race was inescapable in public testimony, as well as in private discussions. Assemblyman Terry Friedman (D-Brentwood), who favors a breakup, conceded that it is a “dangerous time” to discuss the district’s dismantling, especially on the eve of the federal trial of four police officers accused of beating motorist Rodney G. King and the state trial of three men accused of beating trucker Reginald O. Denny.

“Both sides have an obligation to keep in mind that Los Angeles is a tinderbox. . . . Combined with everything else, this could lead to another catastrophe.”

John Mack, president of the local chapter of the Urban League, conceded that there could be “no worse timing in the history of the city of Los Angeles” to talk about breaking up the schools. He said that the minority community is prepared to fight.

Asked by Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) if he would consider coming to the negotiating table to discuss some breakup plan to benefit all areas of Los Angeles, Mack replied:

“As the saying goes, you’ve got to know when to hold and when to fold. As far as we’re concerned, this is a non-negotiable item.”

Times staff writer Henry Chu contributed to this report.