School Breakup Law Reflects Shift in Power : Education: GOP’s new clout in Assembly and a bipartisan alliance toppled old forces opposing the division of huge school districts.

In an era of deregulation and downsizing, it should come as no surprise that the state Legislature has done the impossible: Taken the first steps to allow the dismantling of the gigantic Los Angeles Unified School District, which two years ago was all but untouchable.

Now, thanks largely to the new clout of Republicans in the Assembly, the 640,000-student district may be broken up in the way the Baby Bells were split off from AT&T.;

What allowed the breakup movement to score a victory in Sacramento, after years of failed efforts?

Lawmakers and education lobbyists say the success reflects the loss of power of the breakup’s most high-profile opponent, former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco); the tenacity of supporters, especially the unlikely bipartisan alliance of Republican Assemblywoman Paula Boland and Democratic Sen. Tom Hayden, and the revised goals of their joint legislative package.

Instead of directing a sweeping breakup of the district--the goal of earlier proposals--Boland’s law, which takes effect Jan. 1, makes it easier for disgruntled parents to petition the State Board of Education to put the issue on the ballot.

Hailing her new law as a major breakthrough, Boland of Granada Hills said the Legislature has now “empowered people to break up the schools if they want to, whereas before it was impossible.”

And to satisfy critics who feared the split-up would further segregate minority students, Hayden’s companion law ensures that any newly fashioned districts comply with previous desegregation orders. It also imposes on new districts a variety of other “fairness” requirements, including abiding by teachers’ union contracts.

And for the first time, the law lifts barriers to reorganizing as many as 50 other districts across the state by removing the ability of their local school boards to veto an initiative drive to reorganize schools.

“What we’ve accomplished here is that people in Los Angeles have been liberated from an onerous bureaucratic veto,” Hayden said. “In several parts of the city, they are discussing their dreams and putting pressure on the current district to produce better results.”

While the freshly minted laws have given Los Angeles breakup proponents renewed hope of fulfilling a 25-year dream, they still face a long road.

Boland, a product of Los Angeles public schools, concedes that a breakup proposal probably won’t go before voters until 1997 because “we’ve got to take our time to draw a plan.”

And critics say any large breakup proposals that make it to the ballot probably will wind up stalled for years in the courts, bogged down over a plethora of details, including how to divvy up the district’s billions of dollars in assets and debts, who pays employee pensions and how to reflect the district’s racial diversity.

They predict a chaotic future if the district disintegrates into dozens of separate school systems. “The whole thing has nothing to do with kids and learning. It has to do with politics,” says Bill Lambert, a lobbyist for the Los Angeles teachers’ union.

Breakup supporters say their primary concern is how best to educate the sprawling district’s students. They say the Los Angeles system is too bureaucratic and unresponsive to the demands of parents and that smaller districts will heighten parent access to decision makers.

Even some district backers say the system needs to be reformed, but they argue that a breakup is too radical and ignores the needs of children.

The movement to split the Los Angeles district runs counter to a statewide trend over the past 30 years, when consolidation of school systems reduced the number of school districts from 1,357 to 999.

The breakup measures, approved by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Pete Wilson, make dismantling the district easier in several ways.

First, Boland’s law removes the veto power the Los Angeles school board would have over a breakup. Equally important, it lowers the number of signatures required on petitions to initiate a reorganization of the district.

For a districtwide reorganization, it cuts the number of signatures in half, according to a Senate analysis. But if only a portion of the district--such as the San Fernando Valley--wants to split off, it reduces the signature requirement by about 80%.

By taking this tack, rather than pressing for a wholesale breakup, Boland and other supporters broadened the terms of the legislative debate. No longer was Sacramento being asked to dictate the dismantling of the entire district; instead, it was making it easier for local parents to launch a campaign and get the issue on the ballot.

With the breakup transformed into a local-control issue, Boland corralled five Democratic votes in the Assembly, including those of San Fernando Valley Assembly Democrats Barbara Friedman and Richard Katz. With their votes and those of Republicans, who now make up a slim majority in the Assembly, Boland’s measure narrowly won final passage in July. Forty-one votes were needed; the bill received 42.

While the Los Angeles Unified School District backed Hayden’s bill, it opposed Boland’s as unfair because Los Angeles was the only school system where the signature requirement was lowered.

“Neither bill breaks up the district, but [Boland’s bill] changes the rules,” said Eleanor Leo, a senior legislative analyst with LAUSD. But the district does not plan to fight the new law in the courts. “We don’t intend to bring any legal action against it,” Leo said.

Opponents note that once enough signatures are gathered, the process will follow steps already part of current law. That law requires the petitions to be delivered to the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Reorganization, which must then make a recommendation to the State Board of Education.

While the state board has no specific timeline, it typically reviews reorganizations within six months to one year. The state board has wide discretion in submitting the issue to district voters, but both sides in the fight agree that politics will dictate that a comprehensive Los Angeles breakup plan eventually be placed on the election ballot.

Hayden’s companion legislation doubles the number of criteria that must be met before the the State Board of Education puts the issue before voters.

Already, the board must consider eight factors, including requirements that the new district reflect community identity, not increase state costs and not disrupt education programs.

Hayden’s law adds such other requirements as socioeconomic diversity, compliance with court desegregation orders, preservation of school-based reform efforts, and maintenance of collective bargaining agreements and existing benefits for retirees.

These guidelines, Hayden said, are intended to ensure “that if such a plan is proposed, it is a fair one.” Triggered by concerns of civil rights advocates, the new law was intended to make clear that “you could not break away to form a racially pure enclave,” the Santa Monica lawmaker said.

The state school board has handled about 60 school reorganizations in the past 20 years, but none with the magnitude of Los Angeles Unified, which is more than twice as big as the state’s next largest district.

“The process is not designed for quick decisions,” said Dan Reibson, a state Department of Education official who handles school reorganizations.

The Department of Education, overseen by state schools Supt. Delaine Eastin, will review any recommendations. Eastin, elected state schools chief in November, previously served as chair of the Assembly Education Committee.

Boland said Eastin’s departure from the Assembly removed a roadblock to passage of breakup legislation, noting that earlier proposals had stalled in Eastin’s committee. Despite her opposition to earlier breakup legislation, Eastin did not take a position on Boland’s latest measure.

Instead, Eastin said, she is happy to see Los Angeles voters get a chance to decide the issue. “I just hope they understand there’s no quick and easy way to fix schools that are in trouble,” Eastin cautioned. “There are thoughtful ways like LEARN,” a school reform program that she described as “more promising than just breaking up the district.”

Boland said that despite differences she has with Hayden on other issues, she was able to work closely with the Democrat. “We had an utmost confidence in each other on this issue,” Boland said.

Their successful partnership reflects a major reversal of fortune for breakup forces in Sacramento.

Twenty-five years ago, another unlikely alliance of school reformers stood on the brink of winning a similar legislative fight. But then-Gov. Ronald Reagan vetoed their bill to dismantle the district, which had been shepherded by then-Assemblyman Bill Greene, a liberal Democrat who had been educated in segregated schools in Kansas, and Sen. John L. Harmer, a white conservative Republican from Glendale.

The breakup banner was taken up during the 1980s by former Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette (R-Northridge), but she failed in her battles to slice the San Fernando Valley off from the LAUSD.

But the effort found a new, formidable champion in 1991 when the once-a-decade process of redrawing legislative boundaries placed the district of David A. Roberti, the powerful Senate president pro tem, in Van Nuys.

In 1993, Democrat Roberti mounted a strong challenge to the district’s very existence. Using his clout as Senate leader, Roberti managed to muscle out of the upper house a bill that would have set up a citizen commission to devise a plan for voters to divide the district into smaller systems.

In the Assembly, Roberti’s proposal died in the face of strong opposition from Eastin and then-Assembly Speaker Brown, strong allies of teacher unions. Brown, the product of all-black public schools in Texas, voiced fears that the breakup would lead to segregated schools such as those he attended.

Two years ago, Roberti also tried a last-minute compromise: changing the signature gathering requirements to dismantle the LAUSD--a proposal similar to Boland’s new law. It failed.

And in November, Democrats lost their Assembly majority and Brown eventually was replaced as Speaker.

Roberti, who is no longer in the Legislature, said the seeds of the Boland-Hayden victory were planted two years ago. “We laid the groundwork, conditioned a lot of people . . . to look at it [the breakup] differently,” Roberti said. “You’re literally trying to turn a blimp around in the street.”