Breaking Up Is Hard to Do--but Unified We Will Fail : Schools: Dividing the LAUSD won’t guarantee success for every child. But leaving it : as is opens the door to vouchers.

Largely unnoticed in last month’s local elections, Carson, the most ethnically diverse city in Los Angeles County, voted 2 to 1 to try to withdraw from the huge Los Angeles Unified School District.

The Latino, African-American, Asian-Pacific and white voters of Carson are frustrated with the LAUSD megabureaucracy, which has blocked every effort to improve the Carson schools. Every other community within the LAUSD has similar stories to tell.

No one denies any longer that LAUSD--like New York’s and other large cities’ school districts before they were decentralized--has failed to educate the children adequately, and that minority children are often the most affected.

And no one denies that much of the problem stems from excessive power in the hands of a tangled bureaucracy, far removed from students, parents and staff. Again, even those who defend LAUSD admit that something must be done to decentralize the schools’ management and empower local communities to improve them.

I believe that the LAUSD is so large, and the downtown administration is so unresponsive and entrenched, that only dividing the district into smaller units can begin to solve the problem. All the less radical reform proposals to date have died at the hands of the district’s bureaucracy--where LEARN and all similar reforms are destined to disappear if the district remains intact.

That’s why I introduced legislation (SB 290) to give the voters living in LAUSD a chance to decide whether to divide it into multiple smaller districts.

The African-American, Asian-Pacific American and Latino communities have little to lose and much to gain from breaking up the district--if it’s done right. However, some leaders of those communities fear that dividing L.A. Unified could lead to segregation and the loss of whatever gains they’ve made.

To start to meet these legitimate concerns, I accepted amendments to guard against racial discrimination in the new, smaller districts. The amendments guarantee compliance with court rulings and the federal Voting Rights Act. These laws require schools to eliminate racial segregation, they direct LAUSD to allocate funds and other resources equally starting in 1997 and they protect minority candidates and voters from being disadvantaged in the apportionment of voting districts.

Further, the amendments allow continued busing of students--including across the new district lines--to relieve overcrowding. Students who are bused would receive necessary tutoring, counseling and other school services close to home, rather than at their distant schools.

The state Finance Department now estimates that transportation, tutoring and other services for bused students would cost $20 million to $40 million more per year. LAUSD spokespersons have seized on these figures as an argument against the bill.

It’s a bitter irony that LAUSD bureaucrats argue against spending this money on tutoring and counseling the predominantly minority students who are bused from poor and overcrowded schools. LAUSD should have been providing tutoring and counseling for years, using state desegregation funds earmarked for exactly these kinds of services. The district overlooked more than $30 million in desegregation funds this year, then used it to cover a collective-bargaining contract that should have been funded in prior years through a sequence of administrative efficiencies.

I’m actively seeking more support for the breakup bill in the African-American, Asian-Pacific American and Latino communities, and I’m willing to consider further amendments to meet their concerns.

Unless we give voters the opportunity to divide LAUSD and gain control of their own schools, many legitimately frustrated Los Angeles residents will vote for the voucher initiative, which I oppose. Others throughout the state will join them, as voucher commercials hammer away at the state’s No. 1 example of a failed public education system--LAUSD.

Will empowering communities by dividing LAUSD guarantee success for every child? Of course not. But would leaving LAUSD in place guarantee continued failure? I’m afraid so.