RESEDA : Students Grill Roberti About District Breakup

State Senate leader David A. Roberti had been in similar situations before, in front of the Assembly, fielding a barrage of questions about a potential breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

But this was an assembly with a lower-case A--not the lower house of the state Legislature--and the questioners were teen-age students, not other lawmakers.

For an hour Monday morning, a group of about 250 juniors and seniors at the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies peppered Roberti (D-Van Nuys) with questions on issues ranging from the recession to gun control. Roberti toured the magnet school--which, despite its name, is in Reseda--as part of a Legislative Education Awareness Day sponsored by the Assn. of California School Administrators.

Most of the queries from students were directed at Roberti’s controversial proposal, which died in the Assembly this year, to dismantle the Los Angeles school system. Students expressed concern that a breakup would promote segregation, shortchange poor children and lessen the school system’s political clout.

But “the whole idea that size is power just doesn’t work,” Roberti told his audience. “Other areas of the state resent LAUSD and resent Los Angeles in general because of our size.”

He insisted that his unsuccessful legislation would have protected school integration and equal funding of campuses. But Monique Bridges, a 17-year-old senior from South-Central Los Angeles, remained skeptical.

“It will hurt the people in the inner city,” she said. “I still have brothers and sisters in elementary and junior high (school), and I’m concerned about the situation with them.”

Afterward, Roberti, whose district includes the campus, visited classrooms and signed autographs for hordes of youngsters.