Backers of School District Breakup Revive Campaigns

Supporters of splitting up the Los Angeles Unified School District renewed their fight on several fronts Wednesday at the Capitol, moving to craft a compromise that can get through the Legislature before the end of the 1993 session in two weeks.

One clear-cut step was taken by the Senate Education Committee, which approved a measure dramatically reducing by 60% the number of signatures needed to petition the state Board of Education to divide the nation’s second largest school district.

The proposal by Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) would reduce from 400,000 to 160,000 the number of valid signatures of registered voters needed to move the issue to the state board, which would have the authority to put a breakup plan before Los Angeles voters.

Even before Boland’s bill won committee approval on a 6-1 vote and moved on to the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) said he intended to revive his more sweeping breakup proposal rejected last month by the Assembly Education Committee.

Roberti said he would insert its provisions into another bill on the Senate floor and seek to send it directly to the Assembly floor, bypassing the Assembly Education Committee.

However, Steve Glazer, Roberti’s press secretary, said the Senate president pro tem also is attempting to negotiate a compromise that would satisfy a majority of the committee. He said any revised proposal would need to give Los Angeles voters a chance to decide whether to split the 640,000-student district.

The district breakup long has been on the legislative back burner as the province of the Republican minority in the Democratic-controlled Legislature. But Roberti, who last year won a San Fernando Valley Senate seat, has breathed new life into the issue.

Roberti, though, is prohibited by term limits from seeking reelection next year when his term ends. So, with the curtain coming down on his tenure as Senate leader, the next few weeks may prove crucial for breakup backers who want to capitalize on his influence.

Earlier this year, Roberti won Senate approval of a measure to create a commission that would develop a plan to carve the district into at least seven smaller districts, subject to approval by district voters in November, 1994.

Supporters, including Valley business groups, view smaller districts as boosting community control of education and providing a better classroom setting for learning. But opponents, including the United Teachers-Los Angeles, and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), see the breakup proposal as a way of stripping the ethnically diverse school board of power over education decisions in Los Angeles and dividing schooling along racial lines.

After the bill was rejected by the Assembly Education Committee, Roberti and other breakup backers earlier this month held a community strategy meeting in the San Fernando Valley and agreed to a multipronged battle plan, including the Boland plan, which would make it easier for supporters to appeal to the state Board of Education for a breakup.

To launch her effort, Boland stripped an unrelated bill by Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-N.Hollywood) of its features and inserted new breakup language. That bill would then have reduced the number of signatures needed to send the issue to the state Board of Education from 25% of registered voters to 5% of those who voted in Los Angeles in the last gubernatorial election. That would have meant 48,000 signatures instead of 400,000.

But on Wednesday, after a contentious, 90-minute hearing before the Senate Education Committee, Boland agreed to set the threshold for signatures at 10% of registered voters--roughly 160,000. She did this, in part, to gain the support of the committee’s influential chairman, Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara).

Under Boland’s bill, those seeking the split-up could get signatures of 5% of registered voters--80,000--and take the issue to an 11-member county committee on school district reorganization. However, if the county committee rejected the plan it could not be appealed to the state board.

With signatures of 10% of the voters, supporters would be assured of a hearing by the state board, which is regarded as sympathetic to the split-up because its members have been appointed by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and his GOP predecessor George Deukmejian.

Boland said her aim is “to democratize the process” by reducing the number of signatures needed to bring the issue to the state Board of Education.

But she was challenged by Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), a breakup opponent, who branded the bill as “a sneaky attempt” at the end of the session. She criticized the measure as a way “to circumvent the process . . . That 25% requirement was placed in law to protect the people.” Watson was the lone dissenter on the committee.

But Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin (D-Fremont), chairwoman of the Assembly Education Committee which rejected the breakup measure, said she has not spoken with Roberti, adding that she is willing to listen to any new ideas.

Asked about turning the dispute over to the state Board of Education, Eastin declared: “Heavens no! I have no confidence in the state board, especially as presently constituted.”