Backers of Secession for Valley Schools Launch Petition Drive

Backers of a proposal to split the San Fernando Valley from the Los Angeles Unified School District launched their petition drive Saturday.

In keeping with their less-is-more strategy, organizers said they would ask each of their supporters to collect only five signatures 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.

The petition drive--one step of many in the uphill battle to place a breakup measure before voters in 1999--was kicked off with a rally of 70 people at a Granada Hills shopping center.

“It’s the day after Halloween and the witch is almost dead. By the year 2000, she will be dead and we will get our kids back and give them a real honest-to-goodness education,” said former Assemblywoman Paula Boland, a key schools breakup proponent.

Before the plan can move forward, supporters must collect a minimum of 20,000 signatures from Valley residents who voted in the most recent gubernatorial election.

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

If they succeed, the plan would then go through a lengthy public hearing process involving a Los Angeles County school panel and the State Board of Education. Those agencies would decide whether to put the plan before voters--and whether only the Valley or the entire Los Angeles school district electorate should decide the issue. The group’s aim is to get the initiative on the April 11, 1999, ballot.

The breakaway effort, called Finally Restoring Excellence in Education, wants to divide the Valley into northern and southern halves with about 100,000 students in the north and 90,0000 students in the south. The two new districts would educate nearly one-third of Los Angeles’ public school students.

Supporters say the smaller districts would provide greater local control over decision-making, increased access to administrators and better educational opportunities for children.

Eric Lace, a Northridge resident with three daughters in public schools, said he is not concerned that dismantling the district 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 plan charge that the effort is being led by mostly conservative whites who want to detach from a school district in which the vast majority of students are Latino, African American and Asian American.

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

Supporters said their proposal achieves a “natural integration” by separating the Valley along north-south lines, rather than the more conventional east-west division, which has historically separated lower-middle-class and affluent residents.

“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 the supporters of a split.

The proposal faces opposition from entrenched interests such as the United Teachers-Los Angeles, the American Civil Liberties Union and the school board.

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