NEWS ANALYSIS : Chances for School District Breakup Grow : Education: Key foe Willie Brown’s power has been cut, GOP numbers in Assembly now match Democrats’ and liberal Tom Hayden has taken up the cause in the Senate.

At first blush, it might seem futile these days to revive legislation that would dismantle the mammoth Los Angeles Unified School District.

Agitation at the grass-roots level, which made a possible breakup the hot-button topic of 1993, has virtually vanished. Local politicians, quick to seize on the issue in campaigns and sound bites in the past, have turned their attention to other concerns.

The breakup’s biggest champion, former state Senate leader David A. Roberti, no longer holds elected office, and its most powerful foe, Willie Brown, still presides over the Assembly.

But paradoxically, prospects for new legislation to help carve up the nation’s second-largest school system may be brighter than ever, thanks in great part to the Republican surge in the state Capitol in November.

GOP Assembly members now match Democrats in number--and may even take the lead after special elections in coming months. Republican nemesis Brown (D-San Francisco) has had his influence as Speaker considerably reduced under a new power-sharing plan.

Breakup advocates--including at least one Democrat--have won appointment to the key Assembly Education Committee, which killed breakup legislation at Brown’s direction two years ago on a partisan vote. And if a new bill by Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills) can reach the Assembly floor, more influential Democrats--such as longtime Brown ally Richard Katz (D-Sylmar)--may split from the Speaker.

“We’ve broken ranks before,” said Katz, who supports the effort to dismantle the district. “Chances (for a breakup proposal) are good this year because it’s a different Legislature.”

In a twist, the Senate--which overwhelmingly passed a breakup measure by Roberti in the last session--may present the greater challenge this time without the former president pro tem to shepherd legislation through. But Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), an Education Committee member with impeccable liberal credentials, has picked up where Roberti left off.

Although the heady days of daily news conferences and rowdy community forums led by breakup supporters are over, many Los Angeles residents remain frustrated with the pace of school reform and believe smaller districts would serve them better.

At least one Los Angeles school board member, President Mark Slavkin, is less hostile to the latest wave of legislation to facilitate the breakup process than he has been to past efforts, and the breakup’s staunchest opponent on the board is giving up her seat in June.

“I’m really optimistic for this session,” said Boland, author of one of two breakup bills pending before lawmakers.

Her proposal seeks to vastly reduce the number of signatures required on a petition to hold an election on breaking up the system--from 25% of all registered voters in the district to 8% of those who voted in the district in the last gubernatorial election.

Boland’s measure will probably be packaged with a bill by Hayden that specifies the creation of at least seven new districts and protects programs dealing with integration, spending and campus autonomy.

Both Boland and Hayden, who have joined forces despite their vast political differences, insist that their bills would not automatically break up the 640,000-student Los Angeles school system. Instead, they say, the legislation would merely remove obstacles that make it too difficult for voters to organize their schools as best they see fit.

To Slavkin, the distinction is clear between these two measures and Roberti’s failed bill, which would have named a commission to draft a plan for carving up the district.

Slavkin, who met with Hayden recently to discuss the breakup issue, called Hayden’s bill “a thoughtful approach” and said Boland’s proposal also offers a workable starting point. He predicted that the school board, due to take a position on the two proposals soon, may “not see these bills the same as it did the Roberti bill.”

A moderated position by the board would mark a major departure from two years ago, when most board members lobbied vigorously against dismantling the 700-square-mile system.

Still standing firm against the breakup, however, is the politically influential teachers union, United Teachers-Los Angeles, which is gearing up for another fight.

“I’ve asked the question over and over: My daughter teaches first grade in the San Fernando Valley. Tell me what the school district (breakup) is going to do for her in her classroom and her children?” said Bill Lambert, UTLA’s director of governmental relations.

“Is she going to have more money for materials? Will it reduce her class size? Instead of spending money on kids, we’re going to spend more on administrators” in newly created districts, he said.

But even Lambert acknowledges that the changed political environment in Sacramento has given Boland’s and Hayden’s legislation a better shot now than in 1993.

In the Assembly, Brown was forced to give up the ability he once had to stack committees in favor of his party. Under the new rules, each panel includes an equal number of Republicans and Democrats.

On the crucial Education Committee, “all the Republicans . . . are probably going to be in favor of breaking up the school district,” possibly along with some Democrats from rural areas as well, said committee Chairwoman Dede Alpert (D-Coronado), who is still undecided on the issue.

If the GOP panel members unanimously support Boland’s measure, only one Democratic vote would be needed to push the bill out of committee, where Brown used his power in the last session to strike down the Roberti proposal.

That swing vote could belong to Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-North Hollywood), who has publicly pledged to support the breakup drive.

“It’s so divisive, and I wish there was a way it could be handled differently,” Friedman said of the breakup campaign, which often pitted San Fernando Valley residents against those in other parts of the city.

But “I think it’s in everyone’s best interests, regardless of which side of the hill you’re on.”

With Friedman’s support, “there’s a good chance it’ll get onto the floor,” Katz said of Boland’s bill. And if it makes the Assembly floor, “I think it passes,” he added.

It is the Senate that could prove a more difficult obstacle without Roberti’s presence and pressure. At Roberti’s prodding, the upper house passed his bill by a 28-7 margin in June, 1993.

Now, the first-step Education Committee may be less friendly. Three members who supported breakup legislation in the past are matched by three who opposed it. The other three members, two Democrats and one Republican, are new to the Senate.

“The committee’s not as good, but not insurmountable. I look for it to be nip and tuck, but I expect for it to clear the Senate,” said Roberti, who now serves on the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board.

Hayden said his bill, without the commission envisioned by Roberti’s plan, should not trouble anyone who voted for the prior measure.

“In theory, you don’t have to be for or against a breakup of the district to be for the two (new) bills,” he said. Boland’s bill is “kind of a right-to-vote bill. The second bill gives some assurance that existing court cases and reform arrangements like LEARN are maintained in any future devolution of the district, and I don’t know who could oppose that.”

One foe is Mike Roos, the former assemblyman who heads the LEARN decentralization effort.

Breakup efforts are “such a huge distraction from what we think to be the right direction,” said Roos.

The desire for local control is better served by LEARN and other reforms, such as legislation that would channel most state education funds directly to schools rather than their district offices, he said.

Noting that the grass-roots push for dismantling Los Angeles Unified has abated, some officials credit LEARN and a recent plan to transfer more power to small clusters of neighborhood campuses. But critics say the LEARN effort has yet to reach the vast majority of the district’s 650 schools.