School Breakup Would Tip Scales

Dismantling the giant Los Angeles Unified School District could displace thousands of students, force many more into overcrowded classrooms and redistribute wealth mostly away from the better-off campuses, a Times computer analysis of school records shows.

Current proposals to form half a dozen or more smaller districts, if successful, would cause severe overcrowding in heavily minority areas from Hollywood to the southeast cities of Bell and Cudahy. The San Fernando Valley would be left with far fewer students and be hard pressed to retain senior teachers and fill classrooms with students, the analysis found.

The shift of as many as 37,000 students if all proposed breakup efforts go through also would jeopardize the highly regarded magnet program and wipe out decades of efforts to desegregate the 781 schools.

The beguilingly attractive notion of breaking up the district to enhance local control of schools has been gaining popularity. But this analysis, the first to examine the consequences of a breakup in depth, finds that the issue is complicated by the elaborate tapestry of student transfers within the nation’s second-largest school system.

About 70,000 regular and 14,600 special education students, 12.7% of the district’s enrollment of 667,000, now attend schools away from home--most riding the familiar yellow buses--seeking a better education or less crowded conditions.

Begun in the 1970s as a solution to segregation, those transfers have become the key to supplying additional students--and the money they bring with them--to underused schools in the San Fernando Valley and on the Westside.

If those traveling students return to their home areas, as anticipated under breakup proposals, dozens of schools would end up with empty classrooms and lose the state money that now pays for teachers and books. And the home schools would have to absorb the returning students on crowded campuses, worsening severe classroom shortages.

Taft High School in Woodland Hills, for example, would lose nearly a third of its students as well as about 27% of its $11.5-million annual budget. Belmont High School in one of Los Angeles’ most densely populated neighborhoods near downtown would grow by 2,300 students, requiring an additional 80 teachers and 70 classrooms, even on a year-round schedule.

The heaviest financial toll would be exacted on middle-class neighborhoods where teacher salaries are high and special funds pay for desegregation programs, extra teachers and educating disabled children. L.A. Unified receives $333 million in integration funds that could be lost, disproportionately affecting magnet schools and centers.

The computer-assisted analysis by The Times used Los Angeles Unified data from the 1994-95 school year to project the impacts if seven smaller districts were created in place of one. Such districts have been proposed or are being devised by breakup advocates.

The analysis also found:

* The San Fernando Valley, the political cradle of the breakup movement, could lose more than 13,000 students if Valley schools became independent or if a new South-Central Los Angeles district was created. Given current average class size, about 910 classrooms would be surplus. The impact would be greatest in the West Valley, which could lose $91 million in state and federal funds, some of which could be made up by lower busing costs.

* A new district proposed for South-Central would have to make room for about 12,500 returning students, causing a shortage of 681 classrooms and 405 teachers. But it would have $61 million in additional state and federal funds generated by its returning students to apply to the problem.

* The area of six “hub” cities southeast of downtown Los Angeles would suffer severe overcrowding. The new district would be 553 classrooms short if all schools were on a normal schedule. Even if all its 38 schools went to year-round classes, the district would need 57 new classrooms.

* Due to the vagaries of school funding, the poorest districts would receive less federal anti-poverty funds and wealthier ones more.

State Looking at Breakup Plans

Two breakup plans now are awaiting action by the State Board of Education. One would separate three schools in the South Bay city of Lomita from Los Angeles Unified, and the other would create a new district out of 20 schools in nearby Carson.

A third proposal yet to reach the state board would withdraw more than 133 schools in South-Central Los Angeles. The state board has scheduled Los Angeles-area hearings in May to discuss breakup issues. Under state law, the board decides whether breakup proposals can be submitted to voters for approval.

San Fernando Valley activists who contend that local control would lead to improved education are expected to propose several new districts soon.

Advocates say that the impetus behind the breakup drive is frustration with declining test scores, rising crime and campus deterioration in the giant district, and a feeling that they are powerless to change the Los Angeles district’s bureaucracy.

“There is no doubt in my mind that, given an opportunity, a school district kept closely in line by parents that is not so overwhelmingly large can be far more economical than what’s out there now,” said former Republican Assemblywoman Paula Boland of Granada Hills, author of successful legislation that stripped the Los Angeles Board of Education of the power to veto breakup moves.

Educators such as state schools Supt. Delaine Eastin and Los Angeles Schools Supt. Sid Thompson, who say they are neutral on the breakup, contend that only a broad-based effort involving parents, the business community and other state and local officeholders could fairly sort out the issues.

“It’s so complicated there really has to be state intervention,” Thompson said.

But grass-roots leaders contend that the benefits of local control surpass any potential problems.

“The Board of Education only uses our kids for money,” said Sylvester T. Hinton, co-chairman of the Inner City Unified School District Formation Committee in South-Central. “It’s like little wallets with legs. We want to stop that.”

Hinton said the group would be able to alleviate overcrowding by targeting a plethora of vacant commercial buildings in the proposed district to become new schools. “We would buy them,” Hinton said.

Furthermore, he said, many private schools in the area are eager to join the new district, making more space available.

Robert Scott, a strategist for the Valley breakup movement, said he expects that quality would improve enough that the schools under local control would entice many private school students back to public education.

Educational leaders dismiss such optimism as naive.

“If it’s worth the cost, then we can do it,” Eastin said. “But most of the people who have promoted this have wanted a quick fix. You’ll wind up with a lot of districts that can’t sustain themselves economically.”

Disparities in Classroom Needs

The Times’ analysis found that some areas would fare better than others in a piecemeal breakup of Los Angeles Unified. But most new districts would come up short in some way.

Crowded schools in Hollywood, downtown, on the Eastside and in South-Central, which for years stayed within capacity only by sending students to the Valley and elsewhere, would be filled beyond capacity if those students returned.

New districts formed in the West Valley and Lomita, as well as the schools that remain with L.A. Unified, would lose the most money.

The most classrooms would go dark in the West Valley, where for years about 13,000 transfer students have kept campuses thriving despite a declining number of neighborhood children and enrollment losses to private schools.

About 500 teachers would have no one to teach and more than 900 classrooms would be unneeded. The West Valley district would lose a staggering $60 million in basic state aid and $30.5 million in integration funds--a drop of about 25% of the $360 million now spent yearly by schools in that area.

That blow could be softened by potential savings of up to $23 million in busing costs, based on the district average of about $1,500 a year per transfer student now charged to the receiving schools. But some busing may be needed even within a small district.

Now, Los Angeles Unified receives $3,200 annually in basic state support for each student--and state law provides that any new district that breaks off would receive the same per-student amount. With the various special funds added on, West Valley schools now spend about $5,057 per student.

But a West Valley district would be left with nearly $73 less per student, even taking the busing adjustment into account. In part, that is because the West Valley teaching staff is generally more senior and higher-salaried, and to pay those salaries the area’s schools get $232 more per student than the L.A. Unified average, the analysis found. That extra money to cover the cost of more expensive teachers would cease to exist in the new district.

“They’re going to find themselves unable to buy back their own staff,” said Peter James, an L.A. Unified lawyer.

To a lesser degree, the remaining L.A. Unified schools would fall into the same salary quandary. They would have to make do with $113 less per student, the analysis found.

Money taken from the West Valley and the remaining L.A. Unified district would mostly end up in a proposed Inner City district. Increases in basic state aid, integration funds and anti-poverty funds would combine to give the new district’s schools $89 more per student than they now spend.

The downside for the Inner City district would be a shortage of 405 teachers and 681 classrooms, based on class-size criteria now in place.

The classroom crunch would be most concentrated in the district formed in the so-called Hub Cities southeast of downtown--Maywood, Bell, Cudahy, Huntington Park, Vernon and South Gate. More than 70% of the area’s schools would be over capacity.

South Gate High School, which has already gone on a year-round schedule and added 17 bungalows on a former city street to keep up with population growth, would have to make space for 510 students who now ride buses as far away as Pacific Palisades and San Pedro.

That’s impossible, said Principal Anthony Sandoval. “We don’t have room on this campus for anything else.”

Only schools in the East Valley and Carson would avoid serious side effects. While losing only 137 students, the East Valley’s schools would receive a $37-million windfall in basic state aid, because those schools now receive less than the average basic funding from the district due to a less experienced and lower-salaried teaching staff.

Taking into account a potential loss of $10 million in integration and anti-poverty funds, the East Valley’s per-student revenues would increase $251. Carson, with a growth of 395 students, would gain $57 per student in aid.

Magnet Schools at Risk

One of L.A. Unified’s undisputed success stories--the 132 magnet schools and programs that draw students from across the district with enhanced educational offerings--would suffer in any breakup involving the proposed Valley or Inner City districts.

In the seven-district scenario, magnets would lose 16,000 students, about 38% of their total enrollment. Most of the loss would be in West Valley and Westside schools, where enrollment is inflated by students traveling from other areas.

Although breakup proponents vow to build new magnets, the extra money it takes to create such educational enticements would be in jeopardy.

Magnets rely heavily on $333 million in state integration funds that the Los Angeles district receives to compensate for the cost of court-ordered and voluntary desegregation programs. On average, magnets derive 40% of their operating budgets from that source, according to The Times’ analysis.

Any new district would have to apply for the money, supporting the request with evidence of how it would serve the goal of desegregation, officials of the state Department of Education said.

Though experts say future availability of integration funds is impossible to predict, pending the outcome of any court challenge to a breakup, districts whose magnet schools became more segregated could lose much or all of their integration funds.

The Cleveland High School Humanities Magnet in Reseda draws 396 of its 655 students from other areas and is considered integrated with 43% white students. The highly regarded program receives $857,000--more than a third of its budget--from the state’s integration fund.

Should the West Valley form a separate school district and stop receiving transfer students, the analysis found, the magnet’s white population would climb to 51.7%. The segregating effect would probably disqualify the program for some integration money, legal experts said.

Inner-city magnets might fare better because they are generally given integration money not to reward integration but to compensate for unavoidable segregation.

The Jordan Math/Science Technical Magnet, a school within the Jordan High School campus on East 103rd Street in Watts, is considered highly segregated with 30 blacks, 164 Latinos and only one white student.

Its $160,000 in state integration funds (31% of its budget) is used to hire extra teachers and to buy higher-quality textbooks, while most regular Jordan students have old books or none, magnet coordinator Ann Lamont said.

Some lawyers and Los Angeles Unified officials predict flatly that no breakaway district could qualify for any state integration funding, meaning devastating losses for all magnets.

On a smaller scale in dollars, but hardly in irony, the breakup would shift millions in federal anti-poverty funds away from schools with the most poor students, according to The Times’ analysis.

L.A. Unified receives about $135 million in federal anti-poverty funds, slightly more than $600 for each student whose family receives welfare. The money does not go directly to those students’ schools, however. Instead, the district distributes the money to the poorest half of the schools.

In the breakup scenarios, even the wealthiest districts would have some poor students and qualify for anti-poverty funds they now do not receive. Because more districts would be dividing the same amount of money, that would presumably mean less aid for schools such as Hobart Elementary in the heart of Koreatown, where 93.5% of the 2,213 students meet the Los Angeles Unified definition of poor.

Hobart receives $739,000 in anti-poverty funds, and, like most poor schools, uses the money primarily to hire part-time teacher aides.

Based on the number of students at Hobart whose families receive welfare, The Times’ analysis shows that the school would lose about a third of the money.

“This wouldn’t be good news for our students,” said Principal James Messrah. “We’d just have to go back to bare bones. Educationally, it would be like a wasteland, disastrous.”

Even if L.A. Unified breakups are approved by voters, those plans are doomed to a slow death in court because they would worsen school segregation, some legal analysts say.

As a result of dramatic demographic trends--two-thirds of students are Latino and just 12% white--integration has eluded the sprawling L.A. district.

The Times’ analysis shows that a West Valley district--as well as a Westside district if one were to form--would become significantly more white than those schools are now.

A West Valley district would be 40% white, an increase of 5 percentage points, and more than three times the current white enrollment of L.A. Unified.

Consequently, lawyers who have been involved in 30 years of litigation over desegregation said the analysis shows that the breakup plans mean the abandonment of all hope of integrating Los Angeles schools.

“It’s hard to believe that would not violate state law, a change in racial makeup from 11.7% white to 40%,” said Lew Hollman, senior attorney for San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Services. and a desegregation lawyer. “It’s hard for me to imagine a judge would not say that’s segregative.”

But breakup advocates answer that it is time to scrap the illusory goal of achieving racial parity by moving students.

“Right now the transportation system is only running in one direction,” said Hinton, who is part of the group pushing an inner city district. “If they want to make an argument about that, we can say the buses should be running both ways.”

Hinton argues that the return of black and Latino students would have no effect on the makeup of schools that are already predominantly black and Latino.

Similarly, Scott of the Valley group points out that the Valley schools would continue to have a minority of whites.

“I find it hard believing anybody could call a district that was 60% minority segregated,” Scott said.

* SCHOOL BOARD RACE: Four candidates are vying to succeed Mark Slavkin on the L.A. Board of Education. B1

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If L.A. Unified Split Up

Here is a look at the possible impact of splitting the Los Angeles Unified School District seven ways:

STUDENTS: At least 37,000 students would have to change schools.

CLASSROOMS: Many inner city schools would become severely overcrowded. San Fernando Valley schools would have surplus classrooms.

MONEY: $333 million in integration funds and other aid would be jeopardized.

RESOURCES: West Valley and magnet schools would be most disrupted.

Sources: Times statistical analysis

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Profiles in Inequality

Breaking the Los Angeles school system into the seven smaller districts shown in the map at right would result in dramatic shifts of students and dollars. A Times analysis found more racial imbalances and some new districts with too many classrooms and teachers, others too few. The graphs below show how each proposed district would be affected.

Demographics

With the curtailment of cross-town transfers, enrollment in the new districts would more closely reflect community characteristics.

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Limited English Proficiency Welfare Recipients West Valley 30.7% 13.0% East Valley 50.6% 26.6% L.A. Unified 47.6% 31.0% Inner City 46.8% 44.1% Hub Cities 58.3% 27.1% Carson 17.1% 14.8% Lomita 20.4% 26.7%

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Ethnicity

Compared to the current L.A. Unified ratio of 66.6% Latino, 14.3% black, 11.7% white, 4.8% Asian and 2.6% other, only the remnant of the Los Angeles Unified School District would be substantially unchanged.

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Latino White Black Other West Valley 38.7% 40.9% 6.6% 13.8% East Valley 72.1% 16.2% 5.8% 5.9% L.A. Unified 68.1% 11.6% 9.8% 10.5% Inner City 63.8% 0.5% 34.1% 1.6% Hub Cities 97.7% 1.1% 0.6% 0.7% Carson 36.6% 7.7% 28.1% 27.6% Lomita 45.5% 28.9% 13.9% 11.6%

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Students and Funding

Bars show the gain or loss in enrollment and funding for each new district, compared to the same area’s current levels.

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Students Classrooms West Valley -17.7% -24.1% East Valley 5.8% -0.1% L.A. Unified 0.0% -4.4% Inner City 8.7% 8.8% Hub Cities 6.3% 2.5% Carson 3.9% 2.6% Lomita -15.4% -22.3%

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Staff and Classrooms

Bars show whether the new districts would have an excess or deficit of teachers and classrooms, based on the student-teacher ratio now in effect in L.A. Unified.

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Teachers Classrooms West Valley 493 930 East Valley 61 -16 L.A. Unified 51 237 Inner City -405 -681 Hub Cities -52 -553 Carson -11 97 Lomita 25 3

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Sources: Los Angeles Unified School District; County Office of Education

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Drawing Up Alternatives

The current status of the school breakup effort, encouraging residents in any part of the city to draw their own boundaries for a proposed new district, has discouraged systematic evaluation of breakup plans to minimize the disruptive effects. The charts below show that two markedly different approaches would yield a wide range of results. In general, larger districts are more alike and smaller ones more varied.

12 Districts

Twelve small districts each scaled to about the size of the largest current proposal, the Inner City District. This arrangement gives maximum local control but widens disparities.

12-District Scenario

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Ethnicity Black Latino White Other NW Valley 7.1% 45.8% 31.2% 15.8% NE Valley 4.5% 80.5% 10.9% 4.1% SW Valley 6.8% 43.8% 38.9% 10.5% SE Valley 6.4% 62.7% 24.2% 6.6% Westside 26.3% 37.5% 28.3% 7.9% Hollywood 14.7% 54.8% 18.1% 12.5% Central 2.8% 76.9% 5.5% 14.7% Eastside 0.8% 92.4% 0.6% 6.3% S. Central 37.9% 61.2% 0.3% 0.6% Hub Cities 0.6% 97.7% 1.1% 0.6% Carson 20.5% 49.6% 19.2% 10.7% South Bay 20.5% 49.6% 19.2% 10.7%

*--*

*

*--*

Funding Students Staff Classrooms % Gain or % Gain or Surplus or Surplus or Loss Loss Shortage Shortage NW Valley -17.6% -13.9% +193 +448 NE Valley +8.5% -18.4% +13 +7 SW Valley -20.0% -3.2% +288 +465 SE Valley -0.4% +8.0% +69 +14 Westside -21.8% +1.4% +292 +432 Hollywood +2.7% +6.7 -118 -119 Central +1.7% +9.2% -254 -565 Eastside -4.8% +2.1% +78 +148 S. Central +11.5% -6.2% -382 -495 Hub Cities +6.6% +1.5% -52 -563 Carson +4.1% +30.9% -17 +96 South Bay -8.1% -6.1% +53 +165

*--*

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3 Districts

3-District Scenario

Three large districts following the significant geographical and political divisions of the city: the San Fernando Valley, the Westside west of Beverly Hills and Culver City, and the remainder of the L.A. Unified School District.

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Ethnicity Black Latino White Other VALLEY 6.1% 59.9% 25.3% 8.8% Westside 26.3% 37.5% 28.3% 7.9% LAUSD 16.6% 71.8% 4.7% 6.8%

*--*

*

*--*

Funding Students Staff Classrooms % Gain or % Gain or Surplus or Surplus or Loss Loss Shortage Shortage VALLEY -6.5% -8.1% +563 +967 Westside -21.8% +1.4% +292 +432 LAUSD +4.2% +4.5% -702 -1,332

*--*

Computer analysis be DOUG SMITH / Los Angeles Times

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How the Analysis Was Conducted

Seeking to answer questions posed by moves to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District, The Times conducted its own computer-assisted analysis of district records. Databases for the 1994-1995 school year were obtained covering enrollment, student ethnicity and transfers, funding sources, teacher salaries, student-teacher ratios, other spending, student welfare rolls and special education. Computer mapping linked the data to new districts in various scenarios.

Key assumptions: Transfer students who cross the new district lines returned to their home schools; overhead of 8.8% for central administration; integration funds reallocated based on existing levels at each school; all integration funds stripped from schools with fewer than 30% white students and 10 minority transfers.