Bid to Break Up L.A. Unified Loses Its Steam

The passion driving efforts to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District has dwindled significantly in recent months, thanks to disorganized local groups, disinterest among once-fervent proponents and the ruckus over secession efforts in the San Fernando Valley.

Not long ago, breaking up the school district was the Valley’s hot-button issue. But with the breakup’s champion in the state Legislature, Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills), focusing her attention on a now-defeated bill to ease Valley secession from the city of Los Angeles, efforts to dismantle the nation’s second-largest school district have barely moved forward since May.

“It’s definitely slowed down,” said Northridge resident Jill Reiss, who was co-chairwoman of a now defunct group once involved with the breakup effort. “You’re hardly hearing anything about breaking up the school district anymore.”

Critics of the breakup say the lull could be a sign that the movement in the Valley is dying. Proponents contend that it is dormant but still alive.

Boland, who is running for a state Senate seat based in Glendale, said in an interview that she plans to turn again to the breakup effort at the end of the legislative session this year.

“I am deeply committed to the children of Los Angeles Unified School District and I will not let the state Senate race detract from my efforts,” she said.

Still, things are so slow now it’s hard to believe that just last summer the movement, buoyed by support from Sacramento, was in full bloom.

This time last year, Gov. Pete Wilson had just signed two bills, one sponsored by Boland in the Assembly and one by Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) in the Senate, making it easier to dismantle the 650,000-student school system.

But the string of breakup efforts and the rhetoric that erupted when the bills passed have since faded.

Groups such as Reiss’ Valley Advocates for Local Unified Education surfaced last summer only to fizzle months later. Latino activists vowing to develop their own breakup proposals quickly retired those plans; some joined other breakup efforts.

And Mayor Richard Riordan, who promised to take more of a leadership role in the battle to split the behemoth district, has since backed out of the issue.

Even the San Fernando Valley Parent Teacher Student Assn., which led the breakup drive last year by launching its own campaign, has become inactive on the issue. The group unveiled three scenarios for carving up the district last March, but since then the PTA has been largely silent, said Bobbi Farrell, who headed the volunteer task force that prepared the PTA’s proposals last spring.

But, she said, members have been working to put together a half-hour cable TV show about the PTA’s plan.

Robert L. Scott of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. said the battle in Sacramento over Boland’s secession bill forced the school breakup issue onto the back burner, and that competing plans by separate breakup factions have scattered advocates’ interests.

“There are several grand plans being assembled, and I’m waiting to see which one will rise to the top,” said Scott, who has also been less active in the movement recently. “I’ve been tracking things.”

Stephanie Carter, co-chairwoman of the L.A. Breakup Campaign, blamed the movement’s doldrums on summer vacation. “The people who are really working on this right now are the ones who also have children in school and when school is out their attention and time turns toward their kids,” said Carter, who lives in Tarzana.

Carter’s group has been holding community meetings since March, working sporadically on a breakup plan. The group took a hiatus for part of the summer, but Carter and her partner, Diana Dixon-Davis of Chatsworth, are now working to compile statistics and maps of new school districts.

The two say they have nearly completed a proposal for a specific way to divide the district and plan to turn it over soon to the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

But United Chambers of Commerce President Gerald Curry said the breakup effort needs someone with Boland’s political clout to get things moving. “As a practical matter you have to find some financing for this and [Carter and Dixon-Davis] don’t have the backing to pull that off,” he said.

Curry said the secession bill’s failure might bring Boland back to the school breakup issue.

Boland has championed dismantling the district for years, first by authoring the bill that Wilson signed last year and then promising--along with Riordan--to craft a districtwide breakup plan.

But no plan has materialized, and some people now believe that Boland’s bid for the state Senate seat may distance her from the school breakup issue.

In the end, Curry said, the fragmented breakup proponents must work together if they want to see a plan succeed. “Everyone seems to be waiting for someone else to make the first move,” he said.