Valleywide : Bill Protecting Rights of Students Endorsed
An influential business group has endorsed a bill to protect the rights of minority and other disadvantaged students in the event of a breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Senate Bill 699 would ensure that financial resources would continue to be distributed evenly and that schools would remain integrated in the wake of a breakup, said officials of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., which is working to create a better-educated labor force.
The bill would ensure that “no special interest group can set up an exclusionary type of district,” said Joe Lucente, chairman of VICA’s education committee. Establishing exclusionary districts, he said, would hurt San Fernando Valley schools, which serve large numbers of minorities and other disadvantaged students.
Among other things, the bill would also preserve magnet and charter schools, and site-based management, as well as any existing contracts between unions and the Los Angeles Unified School District, Lucente said.
Assembly Bill 107, which allows for a referendum on whether the district should be broken up, has passed the Senate and awaits the governor’s signature.
VICA has not taken a stand on the breakup measure because it has not had time to sufficiently study the issue, Lucente said.
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