A LOOK AHEAD * With the Los Angeles Board of Education set to vote on the issue today, some community groups are concerned . . .Ethnic and Special Interest Panels May Lose Their Clout

In the tumultuous days of the Chicano student walkouts 30 years ago, the Los Angeles Board of Education came up with a way of dissipating the unrest:

It named more than two dozen community leaders to advise it on the interests of the school district’s growing Latino enrollment.

Since the formation of the Mexican-American Education Commission, the pattern has been replicated for African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans and a projected panel for Armenian Americans. Commissions were also set up for gender equity, special education, and gay and lesbian students.

But this structure of ethnic and special-interest advocacy may have become a liability in the era of Proposition 209, the state initiative that ended racial and gender preferences in public agencies.

Today, the school board is set to vote on a proposal that would replace the seven panels with a single Human Relations Commission more in keeping, school officials said, with the “post-Proposition 209 environment.”

Outside the shadowy corridors of power politics in the nation’s second-largest school district, this rejiggering might seem no more than a move toward efficiency by consolidating seven panels that cost about $100,000 each to run.

But, with so many entrenched interests on the chopping block, the board has wrestled with the proposal since last fall, trying to avoid a scene that now seems inevitable.

Leaders of the commissions--a group often unable to work together--have now pulled their diverse constituencies together in an all-out struggle for survival.

“This is really a backward step for the district, and most importantly, for all the district’s students,” said Erin Tenner, chairwoman of the Gender Equity Commission. “Diversity is the leading cause of violence in LAUSD schools. We should be getting more funding and staff to tackle these issues. Instead, the board is going to ax us without any plan to preserve the programs and resources that the Gender Equity Commission has invested 18 years in developing.”

Representatives of the commissions have planned a protest before today’s board meeting.

They question whether Proposition 209 is the board’s real motive, suggesting that their organizations are being eliminated because they make life uncomfortable for the district by exposing its deficiencies and transgressions against the groups they represent.

“Why now?” asked John Fernandez, executive director of the Mexican-American Education Commission. “Why is the board doing it? Is it because we have become very strong, very connected?”

Fernandez and others say the board has betrayed them in a series of closed-door sessions since board member Barbara Boudreaux, herself a former member of the Black Education Commission, proposed the new Human Relations Commission last fall.

Boudreaux said a new broad-based Human Relations Commission was necessary to tackle the tough racial tensions, particularly between blacks and Latinos, that occasionally arise at schools.

Although her motion spoke of eliminating “organizational structures that perpetuate the separation of groups by such factors as race, ethnic background, religion, gender and disability,” Boudreaux assured wary commissioners that she had no intention of dumping them.

Their anxiety rose, however, as the board continued to deliberate the proposal privately in consultation with attorney Vilma Martinez, who was retained by the district to evaluate its compliance with Proposition 209, which was approved by voters in 1996 but upheld by the courts only last fall.

*

*

In March, district general counsel Richard K. Mason wrote a recommendation that all the commissions be scrapped, a signal that a probable board majority had taken shape.

Mason said that the original intent was not to dump the commissions, but that the board had determined to do so after reviewing their status “in a post-Proposition 209 environment and giving careful consideration to the best mechanism by which the district can implement the commissions’ shared goal of building one community from our many diverse communities.”

If the board adopts the proposal today, the commissions would expire June 30 and the directors and their support staff would be offered other jobs within the district. The commissioners are all volunteers.

As their last duty, the commissions would be asked to help district officials set up the new Human Relations Commission.

The board has maintained a public silence on its intent. Three board members who were called Friday did not return the calls.

However, district assistant general counsel Howard Friedman said the decision has weighed heavily on them.

“There’s a real strong sentiment by the board that the commissions are desirable,” Friedman said. “There are valid perceptions that these are very desirable entities to have. But there are very real legal issues.”

According to a district source, the outside legal review of Proposition 209 compliance identified several conflicts, most of which were cured with minor policy modifications. But the commissions presented a more serious obstacle.

At least two of the commissions, the Gay and Lesbian Commission and the Special Education Commission, dealing with concerns other than race or gender, would be immune.

The Gender Equity Commission could possibly be a third. But their leaders have decided to stick with the others and push for multiple commissions, rather than argue that they alone should be saved.

Commissioners said they have consulted legal counsel who advised them that their activities do not conflict with Proposition 209.

“What is the legal issue?” asked Gender Equity’s Tenner. “The commissions educate around these issues. They don’t grant preferences.”

The Gender Equity Commission, which was created under federal equal opportunity legislation to ensure girls equal access in school sports, has been criticized for focusing on girls, Tenner said, but that is because “girl’s rights under the law are being violated more than boy’s rights.”

Tenner said its work has included producing a manual on sexual harassment and conducting training for staff at 60 schools and pushed the district to create a coordinator for programs to keep pregnant teenagers in school.

The commissions have worked largely behind the scenes, taking complaints, trying to resolve disputes and drawing the board’s attention to problems for the groups they represent.

Their most visible initiative last year was the American Indian commission’s successful campaign to stop the use of Indian names and images as school mascots.

“The big thing that would be lost would be advocacy for constituencies,” said Richard Katsuda, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Commission.

Their advocacy has sometimes generated controversy, though.

*

*

The Special Education Commission, for example, has often pointed out failings in the district’s services for disabled students.

Fernandez said his commission may have aggravated some board members last year with its aggressive lobbying over the appointment of a new superintendent.

“If it wasn’t for the commission, Ruben Zacarias wouldn’t be superintendent today,” he said.

There also was friction with Boudreaux over the debate on Ebonics, although it was eventually worked out, Fernandez said.

And the commission fought the district over the bilingual master plan, eventually obtaining 80 modifications, he said.

“We represent the community,” said Fernandez, of the Mexican-American commission. “There may be some people in the board that don’t want the community nipping at their heels at every move.”

Fernandez, who said he participated in the Chicano walkouts that spawned the panels, said the Latino community is viewed as threatening by “dominant institutions.”

He characterized recent voter backlash expressed in Proposition 209 and Proposition 187, intended to deny public benefits to illegal immigrants, as “one of the largest, most vile attacks on a community since the internment of Japanese during World War II and the Zoot Suit riots.”