L.A. Unified Breakup Drive Stirs Minorities’ Suspicions : Education: Some Latinos fear they will lose political strength. Many blacks see integration gains at risk.

They attend overcrowded campuses or endure long bus rides to classrooms across town. Their neighborhood schools are scarred by graffiti and plagued by violence. They have the lowest test scores, and the highest dropout rates.

Given such poor conditions, one could argue that black and Latino students in the Los Angeles Unified School District might have the most to gain from a radical plan to dismantle the 640,000-student system and create smaller districts with less bureaucracy.

Proponents argue that the breakup would mean more parental involvement, greater neighborhood control, more responsive administrators.

Yet for many minority parents and community leaders in the nation’s second-largest school district, the breakup campaign--born in the San Fernando Valley and gaining momentum in Sacramento--could not be more unwelcome.

They are suspicious of this movement, led primarily by middle-class Anglo parents who, they believe, are motivated by a desire to distance themselves from inner-city youths and their problems.

For many minority parents, the argument for or against the breakup turns not on its potential educational benefits but on fear and mistrust linked to their memories of the past and their vision for the future.

For black parents, the breakup battle is reminiscent of the days of legal segregation and threatens the victories that forced the district to integrate its schools.

“I wonder if the people who are pushing this breakup are really thinking about the consequences to our children, to people of color. . . ,” said Cathy Davis, who is black and the mother of two from South Los Angeles. “The majority of them are Anglos, and I’m having a little problem with that. I feel like I don’t have a voice.”

For Latino parents, the concerns are tied to their rising political power in a district where two-thirds of the students are Latino.

It is not lost on Latinos that the breakup campaign took hold among Valley residents last summer, after school board boundaries were redrawn and the suburban community’s influence was diluted to help bring a second Latino to power.

Activist Marshall Diaz, who led the reapportionment drive, believes a district breakup would destroy Latinos’ hard-won political gains, now reflected in the school board and in the top ranks of district managers.

“If they can’t beat us in the system, they will change the system, and that’s what they are doing,” Diaz complained. “This has given us the most power we have ever had in the history of the LAUSD.”

Breaking the district apart is all about taking that power away, he said. “This is not a campaign for quality education. All we hear is ‘local control,’ but where is our control? They still have the attitude that they know better what is good for us,” said Diaz.

Latino community leaders argued that the reapportionment--which eliminated one of two Valley school board seats to create a new Latino seat--was long overdue. The redistricting took place against a backdrop of their emerging political power: The school board had its first Latina president, Leticia Quezada, and the district its first Latino superintendent, Bill Anton.

But Valley parents were livid over the division of their territory among four board members. They argued that their political power had been weakened and that they had become a stepchild of the giant district, which would tilt its policies toward poor and minority children.

So they resurrected a movement for a separate Valley district, enlisting the support of powerful Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys), who had come to conclude that the sprawling Los Angeles district was too large to be managed effectively.

The Legislature is now considering a bill by Roberti that would empower a citizens commission to devise a plan to carve the district into at least seven separate school systems, each with no more than 100,000 students. That plan would need final approval from voters in the Los Angeles school district in November, 1994.

But civil rights groups have threatened to sue to block any plan that would create separate school districts in South-Central and East Los Angeles, contending that such a move would leave most of the district’s 556,000 minority students in segregated schools.

“Almost certainly any kind of plan they come up with would increase the segregation of black students,” said Joe Duff, of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. “To do this by state legislation would certainly open the door for us to seek a metropolitan (busing) plan to remedy that, one that could involve students not just from Los Angeles, but districts like Santa Monica, Hermosa Beach, San Marino.”

The district is currently under court order to offer programs to offset the “harms of racial isolation,” identified during the long-running legal battle that resulted in a 1978 mandatory desegregation program. A state Supreme Court ruling in 1981 allowed the district to drop that busing program in favor of voluntary integration options, such as magnet schools.

Leaders of the breakup campaign say they do not intend to turn their backs on those programs. In an attempt to limit opposition from minority groups, Roberti recently amended his legislation to ensure that the commission charged with drawing new district boundaries complies with two major court cases on desegregation and equal funding.

Another amendment calls for the new districts to continue busing programs that bring children from 63 overcrowded campuses--primarily in minority areas--to schools with more space in the Valley and on the Westside.

Those who oppose the dismantling, however, note that at least two other important questions of equity remain unresolved:

How would the new districts divide control of the magnet schools? The San Fernando Valley is home to one-third of the district’s 100 magnet programs, which are popular alternatives to neighborhood campuses and among the few bright spots in a system beset by falling test scores and rising dropout rates.

What would prevent the most experienced teachers from flocking to the new suburban districts?

So far, breakup supporters have offered few specifics on how district assets would be untangled, or how schools would be improved. Education experts say there is little evidence to show that smaller districts produce higher-achieving students.

But breakup supporters cite a University of Wisconsin study of school districts nationwide that shows smaller districts are better than large ones at empowering minorities politically and improving their educational opportunities. And they recently won the support of two prominent Latino academics: Cal State Northridge Chicano studies professor Raul Ruiz and UCLA demographer Leo Estrada.

Ruiz has become a vocal proponent of the breakup, speaking at several recent hearings and public meetings.

“This is not, as far as I’m concerned, a racial issue,” he said. “This is a district that has not worked. And it has not worked primarily for minority children. How in the world minority folks can advocate for one of the worst configurations, organizations, in terms of its positive results for children, particularly minority children, is beyond me.”

To further bolster the view that the breakup movement is not racist, Ruiz and others point out that the Valley, where the movement began, is not primarily Anglo. The northeast Valley is home to the fastest-growing Latino population in Los Angeles, with some neighborhoods 80% to 90% Latino. A significant Asian population resides in Van Nuys and surrounding communities. In fact, breakup supporters say, about 73% of public school children in the Valley are members of minorities.

Nonetheless, many inner-city parents are skeptical of claims that their children will be better off in smaller districts.

Many of them believe that suburban schools produce better, smarter students; more than 30,000 of the district’s minority pupils take advantage of voluntary integration programs that bus them to suburban campuses within the district. Inner-city parents worry that if the school district is split apart, their children will lose those opportunities.

“Will local control (improve schools) in our community?” said Luis Zuniga, a Los Angeles father of three. “I don’t think so. Why? Because I believe if my children go to another community, they have a chance to achieve more than where I am right now.”

Many minority parents also worry that carving up the district would force their inner-city districts to compete with more affluent suburban districts for teachers, tax dollars and private financial support.

“What are the benefits to us? What about the funding?” wonders Cynthia Owens, a Watts mother of a sixth-grader. “I think it would be a hardship on our community. We don’t have the businesses other areas do to help us with the funding.

“And what kind of teachers will we get? Will we get experienced teachers, or just the new teachers who can’t go anywhere else? Who’s going to want to come into our community and help our children?”

Parents in South and East Los Angeles are as hungry for change as their suburban counterparts and know their children are not being well served by the giant system, said Genethia Hayes, director of an education program for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“But their concern is about changing the educational outcome, and that’s not mentioned in this debate over breaking the district up,” Hayes said. “Will it, in fact, change the educational outcome for their children? If that’s not the issue, then what’s driving this whole campaign?”

Roberti touts the importance of having a superintendent who is familiar with every school principal--impossible in a district with as many campuses as Los Angeles. And parents who support the breakup talk about being able to participate more in their children’s education without a bloated bureaucracy to throw up roadblocks.

San Fernando Valley parent Jill Reiss, vice-chair of a coalition pushing for the dismantling, said its backers are not motivated by racism--they are just desperate to break free of a bureaucracy that is so overgrown, so mired in labor and financial worries, that it has turned a deaf ear to their complaints.

“Nobody’s looking to hurt anybody else,” Reiss insists. “We just want what’s best for our kids, and we don’t think we can get that as a part of Los Angeles Unified.”

The threat of the breakup has brought many black and Latino leaders together after a bruising period last year when each community lobbied intensely for one of its own to fill the vacancy left by Anton’s sudden resignation. Last month, aware that any hint of divisiveness among minorities could fuel the breakup movement, a Latino coalition announced its support of interim chief Sid Thompson, who is African-American, for the permanent post.

The prospect of a long-running feud divided along racial lines, in a city that has been dangerously polarized by ethnic tensions, seems both inevitable and frightening to those who oppose the breakup.

“Talk about timing,” said Urban League leader John Mack. “There could be no worse time in the history of the city of Los Angeles than now to talk about a proposal that would continue to colonize and Balkanize people along racial and class lines.”

The potentially volatile fight ahead troubles Ruben Rodriguez, a Mission Hills father of three.

“It’s going to be a very emotional issue--it already is,” he said. “We can’t take a narrow, limited view of just ‘my children’ because then it turns into a very limited perspective of the world.”

Minorities such as Rodriguez say they would like to add another theme to Los Angeles’ post-riot wish list:

One city, one school district.

Times staff writer Ralph Frammolino contributed to this story.

About This Series

This series examines the movement to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District:

* Sunday: Political flip-flops and sea changes in the district’s makeup shaped the tangled history of attempts to split up the district.

* Monday: Peeling paint and hot classrooms are among the problems that have made some parents favor a breakup.

* Today: Remembering desegregation and other tough battles, many blacks and Latinos are suspicious of the movement to dismantle the school system.

* Wednesday: Experts tackle the question of whether smaller districts provide better educations than large ones.

Demographic Breakdown

Los Angeles Unified School District

The District: Covers 652 square miles, including nearly all of the 469 square miles of the city of Los Angeles; the cities of Cudahy, Gardena, Huntington Park, Lomita, Maywood, San Fernando, Vernon and West Hollywood, and parts of 19 other cities and unincorporated county areas.

Here are the ethnic and racial breakdowns of the seven Board of Education districts--elementary, middle and senior high schools combined--by percentage of district enrollment.

Amer. Ind. District Enrollment Alaskan Asian Black Filipino Latino 1 73,476 0.05 0.67 39.7 0.23 58.4 2 100,646 0.20 2.69 1.27 1.26 93.1 3 65,613 0.17 9.10 5.45 2.82 63.6 4 67,166 0.40 8.30 15.9 1.29 39.3 5 107,408 0.20 4.66 1.84 1.68 87.8 6 77,634 0.35 6.90 8.07 1.95 55.6 7 111,384 0.24 2.58 25.8 3.35 59.4

Pacific District Islander Anglo 1 0.09 0.72 2 0.10 1.27 3 0.19 18.6 4 0.33 34.4 5 0.12 3.62 6 0.27 26.7 7 1.4 7.14

Source: Ethnic Survey, Fall, 1992, L.A. Unified School District’s Office of Communications.

Compiled by researcher Tracy Thomas