Poll Gives Breakup Advocates Boost

For San Fernando Valley residents who’ve long supported dismantling the big Los Angeles Unified School District, the results of a recent poll showing that two-thirds of the respondents also favor a breakup comes as no surprise.

Breakup advocates say the positive results of the poll, commissioned by the school district, may even bolster efforts to recruit more people, or at least emphasize the growing popularity of pulling the Valley out of the district.

“I’m happy to see that a poll has confimed my gut reaction,” said Diana Dixon-Davis, a Chatsworth parent who has been actively pursuing breakup efforts for years.

“Very few people can give a really good reason for the district to stay together, because educationally it doesn’t make sense,” she said.

However, those who conducted the survey say that even though 65% of respondents favored dividing the 650,000-student system into smaller districts, that should not be interpreted as an indication that there is solid popular backing for the breakup campaign.

“This isn’t meant to be a hard-core measure of support,” said John Fairbank, of Santa Monica-based Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates, which conducted the poll. “This was kind of a softball agree/disagree statement.”

The question on dismantling the school district was among 36 queries posed to 1,000 registered voters districtwide. The purpose of the poll was to gauge popular support for a possible local school bond measure. The poll indicated that if a $3-billion school bond measure were on the ballot in November, it would probably draw enough support to pass.

Regarding the breakup issue: 39% strongly agreed that the Los Angeles district should be broken into smaller districts; 26% somewhat agreed; 22% disagreed and 13% were undecided. Of those who disagreed, 13% strongly disagreed and 9% said they probably disagreed.

Fairbank said that although a total of 65% expressed some measure of support for creating smaller districts, the percentage who “strongly agreed” needed to be larger to indicate a solid base of support for such a move.

“For supporters of the breakup, you want to have as high an intensity as you can on the strong side,” he said. “You want 50% strongly agreeing because those are strongly committed.” The 26% who agreed only “somewhat,” could “be persuaded either way,” he said.

But “either way” could also mean they might be persuaded to strongly support the breakup, said Bobbi Farrell, who heads a school reorganization task force for the 31st District Parent Teacher Student Assn. in the Valley.

“If the middle ground is swayable either way, that means it could be swayable in our favor,” Farrell said.

Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills), who sponsored legislation being considered in the state Legislature to make such a breakup easier, said she takes Fairbank’s comments with a grain of salt.

“I think the response they got about this was something they wanted to keep a secret, and now that it’s out, the pollster they hired is saying that it’s not really that serious. So his comments don’t hold much water for me,” Boland said.

Those who doubt the wisdom of the breakup proposal said it wouldn’t be the panacea supporters are hoping for.

“I don’t think a breakup is going to cure all the ills that the district is suffering from,” said Ruth Bunyan, principal of Roscoe Elementary School in Sun Valley. “There are too many unknowns.”