Scores Fuel Calls to Reform, Divide L.A. Schools : Legislature: Panels approve two bills that would make it easier to split up the massive school district, a move supporters have been urging for two decades.

Two legislative committees approved two bills Wednesday aimed at slicing up the massive Los Angeles Unified School District in a key development that one lawmaker heralded as a historic breakthrough for the perennially struggling school breakup movement.

The most emotional victory came in the Assembly Education Committee, where Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) said she had hoped she would not have to resort to waving around the district’s poor scores in the statewide CLAS test--and then did.

The low exam results became fuel for Boland’s bill to lower barriers for getting the breakup issue on the ballot. For 20 years, supporters of the concept have argued that smaller school districts would increase the quality of education.

Applause broke out in committee chambers after both the Assembly and Senate education committees approved the Boland bill and a related measure by state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) to ensure racial and economic equity in any new, smaller districts.

Boland called the Assembly Education Committee vote a historic victory because in the past that panel had defeated attempts to revamp the district.

Both bills still have a long way to go before reaching the governor’s desk. The next step is an appropriations committee hearing next month in both houses to explore the costs of dismantling the nation’s second-largest school district.

Emphasizing a new angle on an issue that has been hotly debated for two decades, Hayden and Boland downplayed their ultimate goal of splitting the troubled district. Instead, they emphasized the need to allow parents to set a course for reform, wrapping their bills in the cloak of patriotic principles--namely, democracy and voting rights.

“I support the right of citizens to petition for an election,” Hayden told his colleagues.

Boland said: “This is a democracy bill. It really is about giving the parents and the taxpayers the right to decide what they want to do with their district.”

Critical to the support Hayden and Boland got Wednesday was the fact that, unlike previous legislation, their bills would not mandate a breakup.

Boland’s measure would make it easier to place the issue on a ballot by lowering the signature threshold from 25% of all registered voters in the district to 8% of those in the district who voted in the last gubernatorial election. Currently, movement supporters would need to gather 925,000 signatures; Boland’s bill would reduce that to 168,000, an amount she said was more realistic.

It also would erase the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education’s current power to veto such a proposal should the required number of signatures be gathered.

Hayden’s bill would extend current court orders mandating desegregation and funding equities to any new districts, thereby addressing a key argument against dismantling the district--that it would spark an unhealthy racial and economic imbalance as sections of Los Angeles seek to form their own districts.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) voiced that concern in the last legislative session in killing an earlier version of Boland’s bill.

School district officials testifying at Wednesday’s hearings said they will support Hayden’s bill but they oppose Boland’s bill as unfair.

School district attorney Michael Johnson said he believes Boland’s bill is unconstitutional because it would set up an unfair system by singling out Los Angeles Unified for an 8% threshold for signature gathering, while other districts would still require 25%.

Hayden’s bill, on the other hand, would avoid costly lawsuits because in the event of a breakup, court-ordered ground rules would already be established, Johnson said.

Providing a critical vote in the Assembly committee was Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-North Hollywood), who nonetheless sternly admonished Boland not to “sell parents and the community a bill of goods” by telling them education quality will automatically improve if districts are smaller.