State Senate OKs LAUSD Breakup Bill

In what is being hailed by its proponents as their biggest victory to date, legislation that would ease the breakup of the massive Los Angeles Unified School District cleared its last major legislative hurdle Friday when it passed the state Senate.

The bill by Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) was approved by a vote of 27 to 2, and next moves back to the Assembly--where it passed earlier--for concurrence on Senate changes. Boland said the changes were minor and would not stop the bill from receiving final legislative passage, probably next week. Gov. Pete Wilson has said he will sign the measure.

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

Friday’s vote, Boland said, was “the culmination of a 20-year effort on behalf 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 spread 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, “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.

But 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,” 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 on 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 whose who voted in the last gubernatorial election.

Hayden, who noted 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 substantial powers they have to derail popular votes to break up districts.

Additionally, said Hayden, to defend LAUSD 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. 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.”

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

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

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 too 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 Gov. Pete 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 LAUSD.

“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 didn’t realize the confusion a breakup will create.

She said Boland’s bill does not require that any of the legal and logistic hurdles be resolved before a group of residents votes to put together a small district, leading to confusion.

“I think they have created an avenue for chaos, and that is exactly what they are going to get,” she said. “The fall of the Soviet Union will look organized compared to the fall of Los Angeles Unified.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Chronology

* 1968: State Sen. John Harmer (R-Glendale) and Assemblyman Bill Greene (D-Los Angeles) sponsor a bill to split up the Los Angeles Unified School District. In the San Fernando Valley, two or three separate entities would be created. The bill is defeated after it is likened to South African apartheid.

* 1969: A study group proclaims LAUSD an educational disaster, and Harmer and Greene come up with a second bill to dismantle the district. The measure creates a commission to reorganize the district into 12 to 24 school systems, each with an elected board.

* 1970: To the surprise of almost everyone, Gov. Ronald Reagan vetoes the Harmer-Greene bill on the eve of its becoming law.

* 1981: Assemblywoman Marian La Follette (D-Northridge) spearheads a decade-long fight to allow the Valley to secede from LAUSD.

* 1992: Valley activists kick off a new campaign to break up LAUSD. Attending are state Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys), Los Angeles City Councilwoman Roberta Weintraub and Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Encino), all of whom sign a symbolic “Declaration of Independence.”

* 1993: A Roberti bill to engineer an LAUSD breakup through a new commission dies in Assembly Education Committee under the weight of strong opposition by teachers unions and Democratic leader Willie Brown. The plan envisioned creating at least seven smaller school systems.

* 1995: A bill by Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) to get the breakup issue on a districtwide ballot wins Assembly approval and moves to the Senate. Gov. Pete Wilson indicates he will sign it.

* 1995: State Sen. Tom Hayden draws up a bill that is linked to Boland’s. His measure sets guidelines for any new districts formed in the wake of a reorganization. Among other things, it requires compliance with existing court orders ensuring funding and racial equities.