Students Say Racism Is Behind Bid to Split District : Education: Youths at El Camino Real High allege that the plan’s backers want to end busing of minorities to Valley schools.

More than two dozen El Camino Real High School students Wednesday denounced a breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District, calling the proposal racist and motivated by San Fernando Valley residents who want to bar minority students from transferring to local schools.

The breakup is supported by Valley parents who “don’t want their kids to go to school with black or Hispanic or Korean students” who travel by bus from overcrowded neighborhoods in other parts of the city, said Mike Lewis, 17, an El Camino Real senior. Lewis organized the news conference, which followed a school assembly celebrating Black History Month.

The protest is the first by students opposing State Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti’s plan to break up the 640,000-student district into seven or more smaller ones. The 170 schools in the Valley--which enroll nearly 190,000 students--would likely be divided into at least two districts.

Students at El Camino Real in Woodland Hills said they plan to build a citywide student campaign to protest the plan.

A coalition of community leaders from outside the Valley, as well as Mayor Tom Bradley, have already said they oppose the plan, which they characterize as racially divisive.

Lewis said many students fear that breaking up the Los Angeles district would end the citywide busing program that sends 19,000 mostly minority students to Valley schools. They said high schools in the Valley are newer and safer than those in the rest of the city and teachers there are more motivated.

“Education is better here in the Valley,” said Traves Cezere, 17, an El Camino Real senior who has traveled by bus to Valley schools since the second grade. The group also included students who live near El Camino Real.

Roberti press secretary Steven Glazer agreed that the current district busing program could be eliminated if the breakup is approved by voters.

He repeated longstanding denials, however, that the plan is racially motivated.

“It has nothing to do with race but everything to do with mismanagement and poor quality of education,” Glazer said.

City schools would improve under Roberti’s proposal, which the Van Nuys Democrat introduced to the Legislature last month, because parents would have a greater say in running schools when they are grouped in smaller school districts, Glazer said.

But Lewis, whose neighborhood school is Fremont High School, charged that supporters of the breakup “want to move back to segregation,” as well as eliminate the opportunity for inner-city students to attend more evenly integrated suburban high schools.

He said breaking up the district would end the chances of many minority students from mingling with middle-class Anglo students.

El Camino Real has the largest percentage of Anglo students of any city high school, about 45%, district records show. Valley high schools such as Chatsworth, Granada Hills and Taft are the only ones in the district in which Anglo students make up a sizable portion of the student body, with slightly more than 40%.

Districtwide, Anglo students make up about 13% of total enrollment.

Roberti spokesman Glazer said there is a chance that individual school districts created after a break-up of the city school district could agree to continue to offer volunteer busing programs.