Valley District Backers Support Roberti Bill

San Fernando Valley backers of a drive to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District expressed support Tuesday for a bill that would begin work on the task, but would also prevent creation of a Valley-wide district.

Legislation introduced Tuesday in Sacramento by state Senate leader David A. Roberti calls for the creation of a commission to draft a plan for splitting up the 640,000-student district, second largest in the nation, into units limited to 100,000 students each. The Valley’s 170 campuses, with a combined enrollment of nearly 190,000 students, would therefore be divided between at least two new school systems.

“We would support the smaller districts,” said Jill Reiss of Northridge, one of the leaders of VALUE, an organization originally dedicated to withdrawing the Valley from the Los Angeles school system. “Certainly a smaller district than 190,000 students would be closer to the community.”

“There’s more to the world than just the San Fernando Valley,” added VALUE Chairman Robert L. Scott. “We’re not trying to be selfish . . . We’ve endorsed the bill.”

But opponents of dismantling the district continued Tuesday to characterize the idea as ill-conceived and harmful to minority children in poorer areas such as the northeast Valley. Many Latino and black groups contend that carving up the giant Los Angeles district--regardless of whether the Valley becomes a single district or several--would probably result in segregated schools and unequal educational opportunities.

“No one has yet said how it will improve the quality of education,” San Fernando resident Ruben Rodriguez said of a potential breakup. “The real issue is adequate funding for the schools. Education on a statewide level is a low priority.”

Rodriguez and other Latino activists have called the breakup movement racially motivated, saying the effort gained political momentum after a controversial redistricting plan was adopted last summer. The redistricting helped concentrate Latino voter strength in two districts but eliminated one of the two all-Valley seats on the seven-member Board of Education.

“If the district breaks up, we’re still going to be fighting for Latino representation,” Rodriguez said.

The bill by Roberti (D-Van Nuys) calls for the appointment of a 25-member commission charged with drawing up at least seven new districts that would provide for racially integrated schools and an equitable distribution of assets.

In the past, Roberti, the Senate’s powerful president pro tem, has proposed the San Diego Freeway as a possible dividing line between two Valley school systems, which would separate the mostly Anglo West Valley from the heavily minority East Valley. Diana Dixon-Davis, a Chatsworth demographer who favors dismantling the district, suggested Tuesday that the Valley could be split into northern and southern halves, thus including the eastern minority neighborhoods in both new districts.

“If you do a horizontal boundary--say, cut it off at Roscoe Boulevard--you could probably get two integrated districts,” Dixon-Davis said.

But “you really should be going to even smaller-sized districts,” she said. “As long as it can be done legally, . . . school districts in the 30,000- to 40,000- range would be superior.”

If established, the commission would have until July of next year to craft its plan, which would then be put before voters in the current district in November, 1994.

Scott of VALUE criticized the proposed composition of the commission, saying that more seats should be allotted to members not bound by “an agenda.” Roberti’s bill allocates spaces to representatives designated by school board members, the district’s employee unions, other local politicians and delegates from the business community and parent groups.

A better cross-section, said Scott, an attorney, would include “some or all judges or retired judges--people who have an understanding of the law with regard to integration, with regard to voting rights--people who are more unbiased.”

Roberti described his plan Tuesday night at a meeting of the Council of Councils, an umbrella group that represents community advisory councils at 131 Valley elementary schools, telling 200 people that “school government that is closest to the people is the best government.”

To one parent, who expressed fear that the Valley would be divided along the San Diego Freeway into two racially distinct entities, Roberti said that it would be up to the commission to decide where to draw the dividing line.

“Obviously, any time you draw lines no one is completely happy,” Roberti said. “But I would ask people to compare that to what we have now.”

School board member Roberta Weintraub also spoke to the group, defending the plan against accusations of racial separatism.

“This is not the busing issue of the ‘70s or ‘80s,” she said. “This is an issue of whether the district is too big to work.”