Panel May Ease Rules for Breakup

Legislation coming up for a vote today in a state Senate committee could slash by 75%, or even 95%, the number of petition signatures needed to trigger an election on whether the Los Angeles school system should be broken up into smaller districts.

Current law requires that 385,990 qualified signatures be gathered before the question of splitting up the Los Angeles Unified School District can be put before voters.

San Fernando Valley-based supporters of the movement to break up the district, who contend that a smaller district would improve classroom performance, have long complained that so many signatures are impossible to get.

A bill to lower the signature threshold is up for a critical hearing today in the Senate Education Committee, where legislators will get their first detailed look at a range of options for reducing the burden on petition gatherers.

The bill, by Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills), faces a tough fight from opponents who side with teachers unions and the LAUSD against a breakup.

As the senators debate the measure, they may consider a variety of versions of Boland’s proposal.

Her bill, AB 107, seeks to drop the signature threshold from 25% of registered voters in a territory seeking to split off from the district to 8% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election for the same area. That would cut the requirement more than 95% from almost 386,000 to less than 17,000.

Some of the other options drawn up by committee staff members at the request of senators include:

* Requiring signatures from 10% of the registered voters in the entire LAUSD area who cast ballots in the last gubernatorial election. That amounts to 90,445 signatures, a reduction of 75% from the current legal requirement. Some senators who balked at Boland’s proposed reduction during debate last week expressed support for this option.

* Requiring signatures of 25% of registered voters in the entire LAUSD area who cast ballots in the last gubernatorial election, which would put the threshold at 226,113.

* Requiring signatures by 10% of the registered voters in City Council districts in the Valley, which now would be 36,113. Or those of 10% of Valley voters who cast ballots in the last gubernatorial election, which would be 21,165. Or 25% of those voters, raising the total to 52,913.

* Requiring as little as 16,932 signatures under Boland’s original 8% proposal.

Of the options on the table, Valley backers of the breakup movement say they are most comfortable with those requiring 52,913 or fewer signatures, although 100,000 signatures is believed to be an attainable goal within the Valley.

Stephanie Carter, a parent organizer for the breakup movement, said she would be satisfied with any number of the options, just so the current requirements were eased.

“Nobody wants an unreasonable standard, because that’s what we currently have,” Carter said. “Just because we are held hostage by a large district doesn’t mean we should have to climb mountains to get out of it.”

Carter said she feared that, while the Valley may be able to drum up enough community enthusiasm and funds to meet a higher signature threshold, smaller communities may not.

One of the debates in the Senate Education Committee centered on whether to require the signatures to be gathered from the entire LAUSD territory or only the area seeking to split off from it.

Boland, Carter and others said they hope legislators agree to limit petition-gathering requirements to just the area that wants to break away from the LAUSD and form its own school system.

State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), a key supporter of Boland’s bill and a member of the Senate Education Committee, warned his colleagues last week that requiring too many signatures would put too great a strain on any grass-roots reform effort.

“I said I thought 100,000 is the breaking point, and [that] may well be too high,” Hayden said, noting that at some point, requirements for a large number of signatures become “a barrier to citizen participation.”

Former U.S. Rep. Bobbi Fiedler, for decades a proponent of breaking up the district, said she sees a range in the “mid-50,000s” as a fair legal requirement.

Organizers said there is no petition-gathering effort under way or even waiting in the wings to be launched. But Fiedler, for one, said she suspected it wouldn’t take much to mobilize supporters.

“I think that the minute that people in the city of Los Angeles realize that it is feasible to accomplish this end, organization will not be difficult.

“Unfortunately, if you look at the school district, there really isn’t any area of the city that is satisfied with it. There is a lot of discontent throughout the district.”

Former state Sen. David A. Roberti, who led the charge for LAUSD breakup legislation while representing the Valley last session, said he senses a more open mind in the Legislature to this year’s proposal.

At Boland’s request, Roberti put in calls to his former Senate colleagues to try to persuade them to vote her way.

“She’s got an uphill fight, but it doesn’t mean it’s over by any stretch of the imagination,” Roberti said. “Members are actually volunteering that they are willing to give a little--like pass a bill even though it’s got some pretty heavy restrictions. That’s nothing that we ever heard upfront before.”