2 Bills OKd Advancing LAUSD Breakup : Legislation: Backers hail approval by Assembly and Senate panels as major hurdles in placing the issue before voters.

Two legislative committees Wednesday approved two bills aimed at slicing up the massive Los Angeles Unified School District in a 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 wouldn’t have to resort to waving around the LAUSD’s poor scores in the statewide CLAS test--and then did.

The low test results became fuel for Boland’s argument in favor of her bill lowering barriers to putting the district breakup issue on the ballot. For 20 years, supporters of the concept in the San Fernando Valley and beyond have argued it would increase the quality of education.

Applause broke out in committee chambers after both 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.

“This is very significant,” said Tarzana parent activist Stephanie Carter, who joined the breakup crusade five years ago. “The issue should be brought forward to the public for a vote.”

Boland termed the Assembly Education Committee vote a “historic” victory because, in the past, that panel had quashed attempts at passing laws 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 up 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. “This bill lists the guidelines that would apply . . . if a group of citizens were to succeed in gathering enough signatures to hold an election.”

Said Boland: “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 tlegislation, their bills would not mandate a breakup.

Boland’s measure would make it easier to place the issue on asignature threshold from 25% of all registered voters in the disdistrict who voted in the last gubernatorial election. Currentlyneed to gather 925,000 signatures, and Boland’s bill would reducshe said was more realistic.

It would also erase the Los Angeles 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 legal requirements of court-ordered desegregation and funding equities, thereby addressing a key argument against dismantling the district--that it would spark an unhealthy racial and economic imbalance as sections of L.A. seek to form their own districts.

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

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

LAUSD attorney Michael Johnson said he believes Boland’s bill is unconstitutional because it would set up a two-tiered system by singling out the Los Angeles school district for an 8% threshold for signature gathering.

Hayden’s bill, on the other hand, would reduce the district’s legal costs 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.

Friedman said she cast her vote in favor of the measure because of an informal survey she conducted while visiting schools.

“I could not find one single principal who said that the district helps them,” she said. “The best I could get from them was one who said, ‘Well, I know how to get around the district.’

“What we need is leadership,” Friedman said. “The reason I am supporting the breakup is that I think it gives hope for that.”

* BACK TO SCHOOL: Two state panels to investigate education failure. A3