Riordan Proposes a Panel to Guide Schools Breakup : Education: The mayor, who has wavered on the issue since a campaign pledge, says the Los Angeles district has been too slow to impose reforms.

After several years on the sidelines, Mayor Richard Riordan announced Thursday a new leadership role in the campaign to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District, offering to create a city advisory panel to coordinate the growing demand for smaller districts.

Riordan, who called for breaking up the district while running for mayor in 1993 but then wavered in his support, said he has now concluded that the nation’s second-largest district should be dismantled.

He said the district’s “central bureaucracy” has been too slow to relinquish its authority to individual schools, one of the major tenets of the LEARN reform program, which he helped create.

“LEARN is working well, but the schools do not have the amount of power we had hoped for,” said Riordan, who was active in education issues several years before running for mayor.

He said reform probably would be easier to accomplish within smaller, more manageable districts, and that a breakup could produce the best of both worlds. Riordan said his ideal for a smaller district would include only one high school, two middle schools and 10 or 12 elementary schools--compared to the city’s 650 schools.

Legislation signed by Gov. Pete Wilson this summer made it significantly easier for city voters to approve a district breakup plan.

Riordan’s new proposal for a city advisory panel comes at a time when a growing number of groups have begun work to dismantle the Los Angeles district. Fears have been expressed that the competing agendas of these groups could have a divisive effect on the breakup effort and on the mission to educate students.

Those opposed to the breakup also say it may be difficult for the groups throughout the city to agree on a plan to put before voters.

Riordan, in remarks Thursday during a luncheon meeting in Universal City, acknowledged the difficulties in dividing the district--from sorting out union contracts and seniority issues to maintaining racial and ethnic balances.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Riordan said, but in forming the group “we’d be creating something that will be a resource” to everyone with a stake in the breakup decision.

School district officials said they would have no comment on the mayor’s newly announced participation. “When we see what he’s really proposing, in a formal way, we’ll comment on it,” said district spokesman Brad Sales.

Riordan, whose private foundation has donated computers to hundreds of public and parochial schools around the country, was a vocal advocate of breaking up the district several years ago. He later changed his mind, saying he wanted to give the district a chance to show it could implement reforms.

But the apparent reluctance of the district’s administration to grant complete autonomy to individual schools has led Riordan to once again throw his support to the breakup campaign.

So this week, Riordan said, he began talking with education and business leaders about forming an advisory panel of experts, to act as a neutral clearinghouse to funnel information to groups on both sides of the breakup issue.

Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills), who authored key legislation easing the way for a breakup, said Riordan’s office indicated his support for the movement several weeks ago. She has a meeting scheduled with Riordan this morning to discuss his involvement.

“I want to see what he has in mind,” Boland said. “The fact that he came to our office and wanted to be more deeply involved was certainly very acceptable.”

Boland had said previously that she wanted to establish a foundation that would develop plans for separate, smaller districts. That group still could be created, she said.

In addition, she said she plans to meet with South-Central Los Angeles school board member Barbara Boudreaux and East Valley schools advocate Tony Alcala to forge citywide alliances. Both have formed groups to draft breakup plans.

“I intend to meet with them and tell them that I’m not the enemy, I’m the friend,” Boland said. “I want this effort to . . . include every child.”

Bobbi Farrell, legislative adviser to the Valley’s Parent Teacher Student Assn., said the breakup movement has gained a strength unseen in more than 20 years of off-and-on efforts.

“It’s really kind of mind-blowing,” she said. “People are really jumping in. The depth and complexity of the issue is obviously beginning to show--there’s government-wide interest.”

Farrell said the PTSA is getting dozens of calls a day from parents, retired district administrators, teachers and others seeking information and offering help in the effort. The Valley PTSA also is planning to create a coalition to help draft a breakup plan.

The school district has pledged to provide information to breakup supporters, and Supt. Sid Thompson has said he would not fight an effort to dismantle the system as long as proponents can show their plan will benefit students.

In the past, Riordan has worked on education reform projects with the deans of education schools at UCLA and USC and with California State University leaders.

He also works closely with the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, where his friend Bill Ouchi teaches and where his foundation sponsors the Riordan Scholars program. Riordan was among civic and education leaders who recently helped win a $52-million Annenberg Foundation grant for area public education reforms.

Times correspondent Douglas Alger contributed to this story.

* DUAL ROLE: Consultant to school district also aids breakup effort. B1