Valley Group Unveils Plan to Break Up L.A. Schools

After two years of quiet work and grass-roots meetings, backers of a proposal to break up the giant Los Angeles Unified School District unveiled an ambitious plan Saturday to split off the San Fernando Valley and create two new districts that would house nearly a third of L.A.’s public school children.

The long-awaited plan from those who originated the breakup movement would divide the Valley into northern and southern halves with about 108,000 students in the north and 88,000 in the south.

Proponents said they chose that design, rather than the conventional way of viewing the Valley along east-west lines, because it provided better racial balance and more equitable use of facilities.

Citing their ultimate goal--to provide parents with better access to school administrators and more control over decision-making--breakup proponents said they would have preferred more districts with fewer students. But the group, led by former Assemblywoman Paula Boland, concluded that such a plan would not comply with state requirements designed to preserve racial and financial balances.

“There is no attempt here to build a white enclave, which is what the criteria are designed to prevent,” said Laurence B. Labovitz, an attorney specializing in school reorganization who is consulting with the breakup group.

Even so, Saturday’s announcement at Granada Hills Elementary School figures to be the beginning of a protracted struggle pitting entrenched interests such as the United Teachers-Los Angeles and the American Civil Liberties Union against conservative Valley parents and business people led by Boland. Legislation sponsored by Boland in 1995 made a district breakup politically feasible.

The proposal, which would redefine public education in Southern California and deplete the nation’s second-largest school system of tens of millions of dollars, faces a long road to realization. The Valley group is raising money for a petition drive that must capture the signatures of 8% of those who voted within the proposed new districts in the most recent gubernatorial election.

If that succeeds, the plan will be reviewed in public hearings by a county school panel and then by the State Board of Education, which will decide whether to put it before voters.

The notion of at least one new school district in the Valley has been discussed on and off for more than 20 years and was revived most recently by Boland, amid a rising tide of local separatism. But it has taken nearly two years for Valley breakup supporters to draw up specific plans, often leading to speculation that the movement had died.

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In a flurry of rhetoric launching their campaign Saturday, the Valley breakup leaders offered little concrete information on some of the thornier issues ahead, such as how new school districts would deal with the potential dislocation of thousands of students who are bused to the Valley from other parts of the city.

But supporters predicted that their plan would precipitate “the biggest war this city has seen.”

A portent of such a fight came even before Saturday’s announcement. “It ticks me off,” Day Higuchi, president of the powerful L.A. teachers union, said when told the news conference would fall only four days before Tuesday’s municipal vote. That election features a bond measure to repair dilapidated schools.

Higuchi, who was walking precincts Saturday on behalf of Proposition BB, accused Boland of grandstanding to promote her political career. On Friday, Boland’s successor in the state Legislature, Tom McClintock, urged voters at a news conference to reject Proposition BB, saying an infusion of construction money in L.A. schools could hinder breakup plans.

“Here’s a bunch of people who put out some issues that make it tougher to get a bond measure passed,” Higuchi said. “I think it’s political and it hurts kids.”

Mayor Richard Riordan, who has previously supported the right of voters to reorganize the 667,000-student school district, cautioned Saturday about the many financial and political complications that must be overcome.

“The breakup of the school district is something that has to be looked at and done very carefully,” Riordan said. “New York and Chicago reorganized, and in both cases it was disastrous.”

Supporters of a breakup quoted the Declaration of Independence and recited a litany of declining student performance and school district excesses as their rationale for splitting the Valley from the LAUSD.

“Today is the first step in the march to liberate the 200,000 students in the San Fernando Valley from the bondage of a failed educational system,” said Scott Wilk, McClintock’s chief of staff and executive director of the breakup group.

Hoping to demonstrate broad support for her initiative, Boland introduced several supporters for the Valley breakup group, called Finally Restoring Excellence in Education.

They included City Councilman Hal Bernson, Valley businessman and Los Angeles Police Commissioner Bert Boeckmann, and Gary Thomas of the United Chambers of Commerce.

A satellite communications firm owner, Randy Hoffman, presented a $1,000 check to the group Saturday, saying he believes the improvement of public education is the most important factor in staunching the flight of business from the Valley.

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Although deliberations on the proposal could drag out for a year or longer, the Valley movement is expected to increase the momentum of three other groups that have proposed separating their communities’ schools from L.A. Unified. It also could inspire other areas to consider a split.

“I feel like it will make it easier for us,” said Sylvester T. Hinton, co-chairman of the Inner City School Committee, whose own breakup proposal has been stalled in a county-level review. “We’re here alone. I’m quite sure the board will pay more attention to them.”

Besides the Inner City proposal, plans to form new districts have been advanced by groups in the South Bay cities of Lomita and Carson. But those plans have been similarly held up in the approval process, at least partly because decision-makers have been anxiously anticipating a proposal from the Valley, the movement’s epicenter.

Before ruling on Lomita’s plan, the State Board of Education has scheduled hearings in Los Angeles next month to establish the criteria that would be applied to the far more momentous Valley school secession.

In the first practical application of Boland’s legislation, the board will have to interpret the standards outlined in the 1995 measure that opened the door for a breakup. The key element of that legislation was Boland’s bill, which eliminated the veto power of the Los Angeles school board and lowered the necessary number of signatures on petitions. But, as a counterbalance, the Legislature adopted a bill by state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) providing stiff limitations.

It requires any new school district to maintain socioeconomic diversity, provide equity in resource distribution and comply with all court orders on desegregation and school spending.

Those rules clearly influenced the proposed boundaries chosen by the Valley’s breakup leaders.

A Times computer analysis has shown that a West Valley district would have been about 40% white, compared to 16% white in the East Valley. In contrast, a North Valley district would be 19% white and a South Valley district 31% white.

The Valley group projected slightly lower figures of 18% white in the north, and 27% white in the south. Unlike The Times analysis, the breakup proponents’ calculations did not take into consideration the possible loss of bused students.

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Nevertheless, lawyers who participated in the lawsuit that led to a 1976 desegregation consent decree have warned that such significant changes in the current districtwide enrollment of 11.7% white students could be the basis for a legal challenge to a breakup plan.

Stephanie Carter, co-chairman of the new breakup group, said it would probably be necessary to continue some “grandfathering” of student transfers between the new districts. But she said any specific plan to maintain transfers, including those attending magnet schools, would have to await negotiations after a successful election.

The question of the transfer students looms large for district officials who struggled this school year to free classroom space to take advantage of Gov. Pete Wilson’s offer of funds to lower class size to 20 in the first and second grades.

Assistant Supt. Gordon Wohlers, who estimates their number in L.A. Unified at 20,000, said there could easily be a conflict of interest between the new Valley districts and the remainder of the LAUSD or a new Inner City district.

The Valley districts would want space to extend class size reduction to grades three and four, while the return of the students to their own neighborhoods would overtax more crowded schools, Wohlers said.

“Class size reductions in grade one and two becomes highly at risk,” Wohlers said. “It sets up a condition where children in one area of the city are offered opportunities that can’t nearly be duplicated in another part of the city.”

Times staff writer James Rainey contributed to this story.