Senate Panel OKs Bill to Divide L.A. School District : Education: Split vote indicates Roberti’s plan faces a tough battle. Head of local board pledges opposition.

Over strong objections by minority groups, the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday approved a bill designed to break up the 640,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District into several independent units.

The measure by Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) cleared its first legislative hurdle on a 7-4 vote. It must be approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee before reaching the full Senate for a vote.

The split committee vote indicates that Roberti, the powerful leader of the Senate, probably faces a tough fight, especially if the measure reaches the Assembly, where Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) has voiced opposition.

Telling the committee she would oppose Roberti’s measure in the Legislature “every inch of the way,” Los Angeles school board President Leticia Quezada said she, too, is ready for a fight.

Roberti’s legislation would set up a 26-member commission with broad powers to map out at least seven districts, each limited to 100,000 students. Final approval would be decided by voters in the current Los Angeles district in the November, 1994, election.

A similar proposal to begin dismantling the district, the nation’s second largest, was vetoed in 1970 by Gov. Ronald Reagan.

Opponents contend that the breakup movement gained renewed momentum after a controversial redistricting last summer. In redrawing the lines of school board seats, Latino voter strength was concentrated in two districts, but one of two all-San Fernando Valley seats on the seven-member board was eliminated.

After winning a special Senate election in the Valley last year, Roberti joined a Valley-based movement seeking to carve up the school district. When he introduced his bill earlier this year, he said it would be his top priority.

During Wednesday’s often rancorous two-hour hearing, Roberti described the central theme of his measure as self-determination for parents in the school district.

In the sprawling 710-square-mile district “where the stakes are our children’s future, a parent’s participation today means far less than it should, far less than it can,” he said. “Smaller districts mean that everybody counts for more.”

Roberti said the district is plagued by a lack of funds and poor management and needs to undergo radical change if students are to receive adequate schooling.

Roberti was supported by Carolyn Harris, a longtime Carson resident who complained that the South Bay city, although part of the huge Los Angeles school district, has little say over the way schools are run.

Also speaking on behalf of the bill was Raul Ruiz, a professor of Chicano studies at Cal State Northridge, who cited the district’s high dropout rate as one indication the district is failing students.

“This large bureaucracy . . . is simply not doing the job,” Ruiz said.

But opponents, led by Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), contended that the district faces challenges that require educational reform from within, not the radical changes sought by Roberti.

Watson, a former Los Angeles school board member who usually is aligned with Roberti, maintained that the Senate leader’s proposal “sends a very dangerous message” to a community trying to heal the wounds from last year’s riots.

Even though San Fernando Valley parents are seeking the best for their children, Watson said, “this push to separate children of the Valley” from those in the rest of Los Angeles “is deeply divisive and injurious” and will result in state-sanctioned segregation.

That charge was echoed by Joseph Duff, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. If the Roberti measure becomes law, Duff said, it will result in years of litigation based on violations of federal voting rights laws and previous desegregation cases. Also joining in the opposition was Elizabeth Guillen, a staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Opponents on the Senate committee faulted Roberti for failing to spell out the operation of the 26-member commission that would devise the breakup blueprint. They said the bill gives the panel too much power and not enough time to hammer out an adequate plan. The commission would have to finish its report by July 1, 1994.

Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), the influential chairman of the Senate committee, opposed the bill, expressing reservations that the commission would ever be able to fairly divide the assets of the existing Los Angeles district.

Opponents said that if the bill wins final legislative approval and goes to Gov. Pete Wilson, they will attempt to persuade him not to sign it into law.

Wilson has not taken a formal position on the measure, but last month he told a group of reporters in Los Angeles that the idea of splitting up the district “deserves to be looked at very carefully.”

On Wednesday, the Senate Education Committee also unanimously approved a bill by Sen. Henry J. Mello (D-Santa Cruz) that probably would have importance for Los Angeles and other California districts with large numbers of students who speak limited English. The Mello bill would, under most circumstances, require school districts to provide bilingual education and is similar to a measure Wilson vetoed last year.

The committee postponed a hearing on a bilingual bill by Sen. Becky Morgan (R-Los Altos) that proposes more flexibility for local districts in teaching students who are not fluent in English.