Senate Panel OKs Bill to Ease Way for School Breakup

The Senate Rules Committee on Thursday cleared the way 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 L. 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 that the action by the committee--which is 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 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 last week to defeat any effort by Roberti to revive the breakup measure.

Roberti’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 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 fight to carve up the 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 San Fernando Valley politicians.

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

They took the first step Thursday, winning approval from the Rules Committee to gut a bill 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 state board.

Another provision in the Boland proposal would eliminate a requirement that the Los Angeles Board of Education approve any changes in district boundaries. The Los Angeles board and teacher union groups have opposed the breakup, arguing that 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 although it would lift hurdles to the breakup, there are no guarantees that the state board would favor the scheme.

The effort picked up influential support from Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), chairman of the Senate Education Committee, who called “the proposal a much better approach.”