Schools Divide One Area, Add to Another

Brandon Cranmer was once friends with a neighborhood kid who lives one house away on a cul-de-sac in Sagebrush, a sliver of a community on the western edge of La Canada Flintridge.

“We used to see each other,” said Brandon, who is 6 years old, as his face sagged into a frown. “But now I almost never see him.”

Though both children live in Sagebrush and share a street corner and the green stretches of manicured lawns that fill the wide spaces between homes here, they are separated by the boundary between La Canada Unified School District and the Glendale Unified School District. The line has split more than Brandon from his onetime friend and now sometime acquaintance, David.

“It has split the community,” said Liliana Cranmer, Brandon’s mother. “We’re all a part of the La Canada community, but sometimes we don’t feel like we are. The schools shape the community, and we don’t feel a part of it since Brandon goes to school in Glendale’s district.”

More than 200 kids like Brandon live in La Canada Flintridge but attend Glendale schools. Moving them to La Canada schools has been the objective of a nearly 20-year fight that has pitted neighbor against neighbor in a long-running political squabble.

“We want the school boundary to be conterminous with the city boundary,” said Kay Payer, whose son Kenny echoed Brandon’s concerns. “It’s just that simple.”

A few hundred Sagebrush parents, working together under the banner “Unite La Canada Flintridge,” have collected signatures and appealed to various boards and courts seeking to send kids like Brandon to schools in what they believe is their own community.

“It’s about letting citizens decide where boundaries should be drawn,” said Linda Spencer, a mother of two who is a member of the transfer movement.

Requests to redraw the boundary have been denied by the state Board of Education. One is now pending, on an appeal, before a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. A decision is expected by the end of the month.

Proponents say the transfer amounts to nothing more than a dose of common sense: Children who live together in the same city should go to school together.

But add to the mix questions of elitism, school district finances, a school district operating nearly at capacity and a slew of legal concerns and you have a full-blown jurisdictional controversy that runs down the middle of a street.

“It may sound trivial, but if you’re a parent, your life is very attached to the school,” said Cindy Bengston, a Sagebrush resident helping to lead the current transfer movement. “It’s very frustrating, especially for the kids here who don’t all go to school together, who don’t even know each other though they live in the same neighborhood.”

In addition, she said, “we should have the right to choose where our kids go. If enough of us want the transfer, why should it be denied?”

Opponents, many of whom send their children to Glendale schools though they live in the 385-acre Sagebrush area, contend that any boundary change is inappropriate considering the circumstances.

“It is not a matter of kids simply not being able to go to schools in their community,” said Chuck Sambar, a Glendale school board member and Sagebrush resident. “The issues are far more complex. There’s the $186-million bond issue, the racial composition issue and a space availability problem at La Canada’s schools, not to mention the history.”

La Canada Unified School District officials say there is no room for the Sagebrush students if the transfer is approved.

“I’m seeing internal growth in La Canada of about 120 students a year,” said Meredith Reynolds, vice president of the La Canada school board. “I don’t have a crystal ball, so I don’t know what’s coming, but we’re already running out of space. If the transfer happens, we won’t have a place to house the additional students. We’re a small district.”

Advocates claim that additional space can be created.

The transfer proposal can be traced to 1979, when a group of parents submitted 450 signatures of registered Sagebrush voters to the Los Angeles County Board of Education.

But the root of the issue reaches all the way back to the 1880s, before La Canada Flintridge incorporated and when the few residents of the area first sent their children to school in neighboring Glendale.

But in 1976, when La Canada residents incorporated as a city and created the school district, Sagebrush, which was largely undeveloped and expected to remain that way, continued to be counted as part of the Glendale Unified School District.

And the two school districts couldn’t have been more different. Where La Canada’s was composed almost entirely of white students, with a slim percentage of Asian students, Glendale’s schools were beginning to see a diverse student body that would become increasingly so.

Today, La Canada schools are approximately 71% white, 24% Asian and 3% other; Glendale’s schools about are 58% white--nearly half of whom are of Middle Eastern background--24% Latino, 12% Asian and 4% other.

Nearly 70% of all Glendale students speak a language other than English at home.

There are 31,000 students in the Glendale Unified School District, said Vic Pallos, a district spokesman. Roughly $3,800 is spent on each student annually, he said.

By contrast, La Canada enrolled 4,253 students this fall and spends roughly $4,100 on each student annually, according to La Canada Unified School District officials.

A boundary change “would move exactly in the opposite direction of the need for communities and education systems to bring people from different backgrounds together and achieve common goals,” said James R. Brown, superintendent of the Glendale Unified School District, in a meeting on the transfer last month.

The racial claim “is a nonissue for us,” said Payer. “The schools here are just about as diverse as Glendale claims to be. The issue is a community. I want my kids to have friends in their own communities. The racial argument is a farce, a ludicrous argument.”

The $186-million bond issue, approved in June for Glendale school construction and improvement projects, is a different problem, however. Residents of Sagebrush as well as Glendale are now both faced with bonded indebtedness. Should Sagebrush break away from Glendale’s school district, the amount Sagebrush residents would owe is hotly debated.

“If it came down to it, I would be willing to pay for the bond indebtedness and still send my kids to La Canada,” Payer said, noting that her tax dollars are now going to support projects at La Canada schools even though her son Kenny can’t take advantage of them.

Both sides of the debate have found little common ground during the last 20 years, and the debt issue is one of the most problematic questions facing both sides. A number of equations have been cited to help figure Sagebrush’s share of the debt load, but they all depend on the numbers of students affected, and that is another source of contention.

Though both sides claim about 250 students from Sagebrush attend Glendale schools, how many would attend in the coming terms is still debated. The fewer that would attend Glendale schools, the lower the debt load for Sagebrush.

About a dozen proposals are made annually to change school district boundaries, and few succeed, according to a state education department official.

A compromise of sorts has been offered by Brown, superintendent of Glendale’s schools.

“Options now exist under district policy for students to leave Glendale schools and attend schools in other districts,” Brown said at last month’s school board meeting. “This past year, 87 Glendale students were approved for inter-district transfers to La Canada schools.”

Only a fraction of families in Sagebrush are eligible for such transfers--which require, among other qualifications, that parents work in La Canada. And, according to parents who have sought transfers, La Canada school officials routinely deny them, claiming area schools are already near capacity.

“Even if Glendale approves the transfers, which they didn’t until a few years ago, La Canada won’t accept them,” Sagebrush resident Bengston said. “It’s a Catch-22.”

County school officials say Sagebrush’s current status is far from unique. Nearly half of the 81 school districts in the county do not share boundaries with the cities in their areas, according to the county Board of Education.

And even after a court decision is made, many on both sides argued, the controversy will continue to cause friction between two neighboring communities with long, intertwined histories.

“The issue has been around for a while,” Glendale school board member Sambar said. “It won’t go away overnight.”