Boland, Hayden Plan New School Breakup Effort

Vowing to work together despite their vast political differences, Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills) and state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) announced Wednesday a joint legislative plan to dismantle the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Speaking at a news conference at Northridge Middle School, the legislators said that while previous efforts to break up the district have failed, the political climate has changed in Sacramento--with the election of 28 new Assembly members and Speaker Willie Brown’s power diminishing.

“I think most legislators now would favor it,” Hayden said. “This bill is in somewhat better condition . . . than last year.”

Hayden, the former campus radical, and Boland, the former real estate agent, agreed that the school district is too far removed from the people it serves: parents and students.

“Sen. Hayden probably is as liberal as I am conservative,” Boland said. “Yet, from both of our perspectives, LAUSD must be broken up.”

While Hayden was hesitant to blast the school district, Boland was only too willing. “Everyone knows that LAUSD is the perennial doormat of public education,” she said. “Every restructuring program they have ever put forth has been a total failure.”

School district officials said they would oppose the latest attempts to split the system.

“I continue to think that the best place to chart the course for L. A. schools is in Los Angeles, not Sacramento,” school board President Mark Slavkin said. “Rather than evoking legislators from Eureka to San Diego who probably have never been to Los Angeles schools . . . they should join with us. Let’s just do it here rather than continue the cause as a political issue around which to posture and to plug into perceived anger.”

Said board member Jeff Horton: “It’s a whole lot of effort that I don’t see helping the classroom.”

Under Boland’s bill, which will be introduced next month, the number of voters’ signatures required to place a breakup initiative on the ballot would be reduced from 25% to 8%. Additionally, Boland would seek to amend current law so that the Los Angeles Board of Education would be unable to veto breakup proposals.

“Once passed, this legislation will give disaffected parents, for the first time, a legitimate chance of dismantling this bloated bureaucracy,” Boland said. “Breaking up this school district into smaller autonomous districts will empower children, parents and teachers and with it an infusion of people bringing new energy and ideas.”

Under Hayden’s bill, which is intended to complement Boland’s legislation, all federal and state court orders mandating desegregation would be maintained in new, smaller districts. Additionally, new districts would be allowed to maintain collective bargaining agreements and required to maintain socioeconomic diversity, he said.

A committee would likely be formed to develop the breakup proposals, under the bill.

Hayden said he supports dismantling the system because--like other bureaucratic institutions--power is too far removed from its constituents.

“It’s this philosophical concern that has brought me to conclude over the years that the Los Angeles school district is way too large for any district or organization for parents or children or teachers to have an effective say in it,” he said.

The district, the nation’s second largest, enrolls 636,416 students and has an annual budget of about $4.5 billion. Budget cuts over the past several years have required teachers and other employees to take pay cuts and raised class sizes.

Parents, particularly in the San Fernando Valley, have long felt disenfranchised from the district’s headquarters downtown. To help decentralize decisions, the school system has broken into clusters of schools and adopted a reform program, known as LEARN.

In the last attempt to break up the district, several board members and teachers union leaders waged campaigns of their own to fight the legislation. United Teachers-Los Angeles President Helen Bernstein said Wednesday that the union’s position hasn’t changed.

“Nothing dictates that these districts will look better,” she said. “I don’t care what anyone says, you are reinventing all over again the Los Angeles Unified School District.”

While the lawmakers did not say how many school districts would be created, they said the Valley should definitely have at least one--but probably more--districts.

“Two school boards instead of one is not enough for me,” Hayden said. “I believe deeply that education will improve if parents and community (members) have an easier time dealing with the school board.”

The actual breakup proposals would be crafted by a community coalition, including legislators, parents and business leaders. Under present law, those proposals would then be reviewed by the county Office of Education and the state Board of Education. The Los Angeles school board now has the power to veto breakup proposals.

Nearly 18 months ago, an Assembly committee overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to break up the school district. That action essentially killed the breakup movement, which had gained considerable political momentum during the election year. Former state Sen. David A. Roberti of Van Nuys, a former staunch supporter of the district, joined the movement after winning a special election in the Valley two years ago. Hayden’s bill replicates Roberti’s failed proposal.

Similar efforts over the years have failed. Former Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette tried repeatedly--and unsuccessfully--to persuade the Legislature to support breakup bills. And, even as long as 20 years ago, bills were introduced to dismantle the system.

Both Hayden and Boland said they believe that parents in the Valley are the most dissatisfied with the school district but that they believe the movement will spread to other parts of the district.

“If the Valley does (break off from the school system) and, in a few short years, people are happier, then I think people on the Westside and elsewhere will consider it,” Hayden said.

Several Valley community and business leaders who attended the news conference said they welcomed the lawmakers’ renewed efforts.

“We need to have smaller school districts and we need to have local control,” said Gerald Curry, president of the United Chambers of Commerce. “The L. A. school district really has become a behemoth.”