Business Group Enters Schools Breakup Move : Education: A task force will help dismantle the massive LAUSD, form smaller, separate districts.

In a key strategy session, a San Fernando Valley business group unanimously agreed Tuesday to fully participate in the movement to create separate Valley school districts.

After receiving advice from a consultant and attorney involved in other district reorganizations, the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley agreed to work with other groups citywide to dismantle the massive Los Angeles Unified School District.

About 30 people met at the Airtel Plaza Hotel in Van Nuys to launch the effort.

Laurence Labovitz, a Woodland Hills resident and Los Angeles attorney with experience in creating new districts, and Joel Kirschenstein, a public policy consultant, cautioned that it could take several years--and hundreds of thousands of dollars--before the district could be split up.

“This is a significant, major, aggressive overhaul of a political structure,” Kirschenstein said. “I have never seen a greater challenge . . . this is no small task.”

The United Chambers is one of several groups emerging throughout the city to campaign for the breakup of the school district. Armed with recent state legislation that makes it politically easier to dismantle the district, the groups are attempting to draft plans for separate, smaller districts that could ultimately win voter approval.

To that end, the valley business group agreed to create a task force that will work with other community groups to develop and circulate breakup ballot petitions.

The consultants, who have not been hired by the United Chambers, cautioned that the effort will require experts and attorneys who can maneuver breakup proposals through the various county and state education agencies.

“Take it out of your mind if you think you can wing it on this one,” Labovitz said. “If you’re going to break away, you get your own educational consultant. If you don’t do that, you’re kidding yourself.”

State Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) encouraged all the groups to work together. It was Boland who authored the groundbreaking legislation that reduced the number of signatures required to put a breakup plan on the ballot and stripped the Los Angeles Board of Education of veto power over such a plan.

“I want to be inclusionary in the movement,” Boland said, adding that she would unveil a plan within a week to spearhead the effort. “I want every child to be considered . . . in this movement.”

The San Fernando Valley Parent Teacher Student Assn., which is creating a coalition to study the issue, agreed, saying groups from various parts of the city need to determine--together--the best way to educate students.

“I think the more we sit at the table together, the better,” said Bobbi Farrell, the PTSA’s legislative adviser, who attended the chamber meeting. “We certainly don’t want to cause splits within the Valley.”

To gauge interest in the breakup, the PTSA plans this fall to conduct a Valleywide parent survey--the first since the 1970s, when parents were asked their opinion of corporal punishment and discipline in the schools.

“We really need to know how our members feel about this issue,” Farrell said. “We’re really asking for an emotional reaction. Do they approve of a breakup and would they feel it’s advantageous to student learning, or whether they have other concerns.”

The survey, completed Tuesday, will be sent to the group’s 55,000 members when classes resume next month.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles school district officials, who say they will not fight a breakup plan if it can improve education, have agreed to provide information to all sides in the debate. Assistant Supt. Gordon Wohlers has been designated to deal with information requests.

A parent and community group in South-Central Los Angeles began work last week on several plans for a separate district in that area. Groups in Lomita and Gardena also are exploring the idea. Breakup advocates in Carson already have drafted a plan and collected signatures.

In the southeast portion of the county, parents and politicians are watching closely to see how breakup plans in other sections of the district will affect them. Because schools in Huntington Park, Bell and South Gate are among the most overcrowded in the district and bus children miles away, people there say they want to know how their children will be affected.

Valley breakup supporters say they probably would keep the school doors open to those students. “I’m hoping there will be a lot of cooperation between new districts,” said Diana Dixon-Davis, a breakup advocate.

“Right now, there is no cooperation between the LAUSD and anyone else.”