Latino Group Challenges Breakup Plan : Schools: Activists will meet to discuss their concerns that carving up the district may threaten programs they favor.

Concerned by the growing movement to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District, San Fernando Valley Latino activists have scheduled a meeting this week to discuss ways to protect programs they favor, such as bilingual education, if it succeeds.

Members of the Valley chapter of the Latino Redistricting Coalition, an organization that opposes the breakup campaign, are worried that anti-immigrant sentiment may influence the breakup drive and threaten the interests of Latino students, who make up the majority of the district’s students.

Coalition spokesman Jose Galvan said Monday that his group must remobilize its forces, citing the debate over affirmative action and the pro-Proposition 187 stance of Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills), a leader in the breakup movement.

“We’re not convinced it’s going to be a done deal,” Galvan said of the breakup, “but whatever happens, we want to make sure that we [save] the programs that we want to support and keep intact.”

The coalition, whose efforts to redraw school board boundaries reignited the breakup movement three years ago, remains unmoved in its opposition to carving up the nation’s second-largest school system, Galvan said.

“Conceptually it’s not changed,” he said, “but we have to look at the reality” of the current political landscape, which is the friendliest to breakup efforts in years. Gov. Pete Wilson has signed Boland’s legislation reducing the number of signatures required to qualify a breakup proposal for the ballot, and Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan last week renewed his support for smaller school districts, offering to create a city advisory panel charged with coordinating a breakup plan.

Along with the less stringent petitioning requirement, Wilson also approved a companion bill by Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) that directs any new districts to preserve racial balance efforts, current educational reforms and collective bargaining agreements.

Latino activists are worried that a breakup could spell the end of programs such as bilingual education and an extensive undertaking to provide free breakfasts and lunches to students from poor families.

Jerry Curry, president of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley, which supports a breakup, said Hayden’s legislation should assuage fears of many Latino parents that their children will be relegated to second-rate schools unable--or unwilling--to meet their needs.

“I think the concern is a little misplaced,” Curry said. “This whole process has to meet strict legal requirements. Anything you can think of with respect to discrimination or problems concerning bilingual education [would be] covered.”

Galvan said the Latino coalition will discuss Hayden’s legislation at Thursday night’s meeting, to be held in San Fernando in conjunction with the Valley chapter of the Mexican American Political Assn.