School District Breakup Backers Start Petition Drive

Backers of a proposal to break up the massive Los Angeles Unified School District launched their petition drive Saturday, employing the same smaller-is-better theory that is fueling their campaign.

In keeping with their less-is-more strategy, leaders of the movement to split the San Fernando Valley away from the nation’s second-largest public school system unveiled a petition asking supporters to collect five signatures each from Valley voters.

Proponents are wagering that more people will participate in the petition-signing campaign if they are asked only to collect a few signatures from family and friends rather than scores in a door-to-door effort.

As one step of many in the long road toward placing a breakup measure before voters in 1999, the petition drive was nonetheless kicked off with fanfare and speeches at a shopping center rally.

“It’s the day after Halloween and the witch is almost dead,” former Assemblywoman Paula Boland told about 70 supporters at the Granada Hills Plaza before signing the first petition.

“By the year 2000, she will be dead, and we will get our kids back and give them a real honest-to-goodness education,” Boland said, her words nearly drowned out by cheering supporters.

Ultimately, breakup proponents must collect a minimum 20,000 signatures from Valley residents who voted within the proposed new districts in the most recent gubernatorial election before the plan can move forward.

Although there is no deadline to collect signatures, group leaders said they intend to gather 60,000 signatures by February.

If they succeed, the plan would then go through a lengthy public hearing process before a Los Angeles County school panel and the State Board of Education, which will decide whether to put the plan before voters. The group’s aim is to get the initiative on the April 11, 1999 ballot.

The breakaway effort, called Finally Restoring Excellence in Education, or FREE, wants to divide the Valley into northern and southern halves with about 100,000 students in the north and about 90,000 students in the south. The two new districts would educate nearly one-third of Los Angeles’ public school students.

The smaller districts would provide greater local control over decision-making, increased access to administrators and better educational opportunities for children, supporters said.

In launching their petition-signing campaign Saturday, the Valley breakup leaders seized the opportunity to recount the decades-long fight by various secessionist groups to separate Valley schoolchildren from the mammoth Los Angeles district.

“This is for our kids. We are on a wonderful journey,” Boland said.

Other supporters of the proposal who attended the rally included Valley businessman Bert Boeckmann, United Chambers of Commerce President Gary M. Thomas, and Scott Wilk, chief of staff for Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) and executive director of FREE.

While the movement has reached into the suites of political and financial power brokers in the Valley and Sacramento, its roots are within the community, participants said Saturday.

Eric Lace, a Northridge resident with three daughters in public schools, said he is not concerned that dismantling the system could mean the possible loss of millions of dollars in state and federal funds, and that taxpayers would have to make up the shortfall.

“I have heard that argument before,” Lace said. “If we can get a better school system, I am willing to pay more.”

Critics of the restructuring plan contend that the effort is being led by mostly conservative whites who want to detach from a school district that is becoming increasingly African American, Latino and Asian.

“This is not a segregation issue,” said Sharon Ashford, an African American woman from Sherman Oaks who has been home-schooling her three children. “This is about restoring excellence in education. All of the children are suffering.”

Rather than dividing the Valley along more conventional east-west sides, supporters said the north-south split achieves “a natural integration.” They said they believe more members of minorities will join the effort over time.

“We will be making a concerted effort to reach out to the minority community because it will be in everyone’s best interest to do so,” said Laurence B. Labovitz, an attorney specializing in school reorganization who is consulting with FREE.

Even with the positives enumerated by supporters at Saturday’s rally, the proposal will very likely face increased opposition from entrenched interests such as the United Teachers-Los Angeles, the American Civil Liberties Union and LAUSD board members.

“I opposed the breakup because it is not going to help a single child to learn anything more in the classroom,” Los Angeles school board President Jeff Horton said. “I have never heard proponents give an explanation on how it will improve instruction in the classroom.

“We won’t be trying to stop the petition drive,” Horton continued. “Our best defense against this enormous waste of time and energy is for us to concentrate on improving instruction.”