State Senate Approves Bill to Ease L.A. Schools’ Breakup

Hailed by proponents as their biggest victory to date, legislation easing the breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District on Friday cleared its last major legislative hurdle.

The bill by Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) was approved by the state Senate 27 to 2. It now moves back to the Assembly--where it passed earlier--for concurrence in Senate changes. Boland said the changes were minor and would not stop the bill from receiving final legislative passage, probably next week.

The bill (AB 107) would substantially reduce the number of signatures needed to place the breakup proposal on the ballot.

Gov. Pete Wilson has said he will sign the measure--which will result in what Boland described as “the culmination of a 20-year effort on behalf of myself and parents” to dismantle the sprawling educational empire with its 855 schools and 640,000 students. In its place would be a latticework of smaller school districts spreading over more than 700 square miles.

State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) said the Boland legislation, along with a companion bill of his own (SB 699), “establishes a process by which citizens of Los Angeles can create a new school district if they choose to” and contains built-in guarantees against a return to the days of schools segregated by race or economic class.

In a heated exchange between two of the Senate’s most outspoken liberals, state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) disputed Hayden’s fairness claim, calling the Boland bill “exclusionary” and reflecting the same bias she said was exhibited this week when the University of California regents voted to terminate affirmative action practices.

“This bill follows in lock step with what the regents did . . . and we will all live to regret what we are doing to future generations of children, particularly those children who are on the lower socioeconomic scale and who are people of color,” Watson said.

Only by bringing the largest number of people possible into the breakup process--including those needed to petition its qualification for the ballot--will the issue be settled fairly, Watson said.

The bill would reduce the number of signatures needed to get the issue on the ballot from 25% of all registered voters in the district to 8% of those who voted in the last gubernatorial election.

Hayden, who noted that he was at the UC regents meeting Thursday arguing to retain affirmative action, said he was “puzzled” by Watson’s charge.

“This bill is not about affirmative action,” he said. “It is about bureaucratic control” and reflects “principles I have fought for a long time,” including “letting the people decide instead of letting bureaucratic rulers to have a veto power.”

One feature of the bill would remove from school boards statewide the substantial powers they have to derail popular votes to break up districts.

Additionally, Hayden said, to defend Los Angeles Unified is to defend a district that “has been sued successfully by civil rights groups for being racist and unresponsive to their needs.”

Boland said she was elated by the vote and “I can’t wait to tell the parents in the district.” About Watson’s charge, Boland said, “of course, it’s not exclusionary.”

Children and parents who have “to go five miles to get to a school board that is unresponsive to them [will] have a board where they can have their voices heard,” she said.

Board of Education President Mark Slavkin said he was not surprised by the vote but cautioned that the bill still faces a possible legal challenge from the district.

He said the board will meet Monday in closed session with district lawyers to discuss suing on the grounds that the bill unfairly singles out Los Angeles Unified.

But Slavkin said such legal challenges will probably not be launched until after the bill has been signed into law.

“The Senate action is significant,” Slavkin said. “My expectation is that this bill will be enacted and take effect on Jan. 1.”

The vote was good news for San Fernando Valley activists who have been pressing for the breakup for years. However, they conceded that roadblocks remain before voters will be asked to decide on the breakup.

“I think we’ve got more hurdles to overcome, but it’s pretty encouraging that it passed the Assembly and the Senate,” said Gerald Curry, president of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley, which has backed the breakup bill.

In addition to surviving a legal challenge, Curry said, supporters of a breakup must draft a plan for separate school districts, which must be reviewed by the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization. That panel would then hold hearings and prepare a report for the State Board of Education.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, a former school board member, said the breakup, like Wilson’s opposition to affirmative action, will only create further racial tension in the city without addressing residents’ concerns about the district’s management and finances.

“What this says is that you can tear up the district that defends poor kids and you can do it in the name of local control,” she said.

Ultimately, she said, the bill will create smaller districts that will suffer even worse problems than those facing Los Angeles Unified.

“You can’t find a small district that isn’t starving to death,” she said. “You can’t find any small minority district that is doing as well as the LAUSD.”

United Teachers-Los Angeles President Helen Bernstein called Friday’s vote “very significant,” saying most of the legislators who voted for the bill did not realize the confusion a breakup will create.