Breakup Bid Gains as Redistricting Effort Fades : Legislation: Senate panel’s action may make it easier to get the State Board of Education to consider a dismantling of the L.A. Unified School District.

The Senate Rules Committee cleared the way Thursday for consideration of legislation that would make it much easier to petition the State Board of Education to dismantle the massive Los Angeles Unified School District.

The committee unanimously agreed to allow Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) to amend a bill that would reduce by 80% the number of valid voter signatures needed to force the state board to consider the breakup, according to Teri Burns, an aide to Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys).

Boland’s bill would slash the number of signatures needed from 400,000 to 80,000.

Burns said the action by the committee--chaired by Roberti, the legislative champion of the breakup movement--would allow the Senate Education Committee to review the proposal as early as next week.

The Rules Committee vote revived the debate in the Legislature over the future of education in Los Angeles--a debate that many lawmakers believed was ended when the Assembly Education Committee last month rejected Roberti’s previous measure to break up the school district.

The ultimate fate of the proposal remains in doubt.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), who strongly opposes splitting up the district, vowed just last week to defeat any effort by Roberti to revive the breakup measure.

Robert’s previous bill would have set up a commission to put before the voters a measure asking whether the district should be broken into seven smaller school systems.

After that measure’s defeat, Roberti and other breakup supporters organized a meeting at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys two weeks ago to map out strategy for the ongoing fight to carve up the nation’s second largest school district.

One suggestion was to make it easier to put the issue before the State Board of Education, which is dominated by appointees of Gov. Pete Wilson and his Republican predecessor, George Deukmejian.

These board members are thought by breakup supporters to be sympathetic to their cause, which has been championed by politicians from the San Fernando Valley, where it has drawn many supporters.

With just three weeks remaining in the 1993 legislative session, breakup supporters are racing the clock to win approval of a new proposal before the Sept. 10 deadline.

They took the first step Thursday, winning approval from the Rules Committee to gut a bill already in the Senate pipeline and replace its contents with language changing the petition requirements.

Burns said that under current law, breakup supporters would need to obtain valid signatures of 25% of the district’s registered voters--about 400,000 people--to get the county Board of Education to consider the matter and guarantee a review by the state board.

Petitions signed by 10% of the voters would be sufficient to put the breakup question before the county officials, but if they rejected the petitions, supporters could not appeal to Sacramento.

Burns said Boland, with Roberti’s support, has proposed dramatically lowering the Sacramento-appeal level to 5% of the district’s voters--about 80,000 signatures. Under the proposal, the county officials would still review the petition, but if they rejected it, backers would have the right to a hearing by the presumably more sympathetic state board.

Another provision in the Boland proposal would eliminate a requirement in current law that the Los Angeles Board of Education approve any changes in district boundaries. The Los Angeles board and teacher union groups have vigorously opposed the breakup, arguing it would divide the city along racial lines and would not necessarily improve classroom education.

Burns said the aim of the bill is “to make the law more user-friendly.” But she cautioned that while it would lift hurdles to the breakup, there are no guarantees that the state board would favor the scheme.

The new effort immediately picked up influential support, appearing to win over a lawmaker who previously had been an important opponent of the breakup drive.

Sen. Gary K. Hart, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, who opposed Roberti’s earlier breakup legislation, called the latest proposal “a much better approach.”

“I’m much more comfortable with this because it’s a much more deliberative process,” the Santa Barbara Democrat said. He can support this measure in part because it’s closer to the way school reorganizations are currently carried out, he said, instead of setting up a commission directed to carve up the district, as Roberti’s previous breakup bill proposed.

Under Boland’s measure, he said, “the state board would hear the evidence and make a decision.”

Hart said he is willing to go along with lowering the number of signatures required to petition the state board--although he is not certain what number is appropriate.

He expects the bill to be considered by his committee next Wednesday.