Districtwide Vote Urged on L.A. Unified Breakup Bid

Attempting to duplicate last year’s legislation that required any secession effort to go before voters citywide, a San Fernando Valley lawmaker plans to introduce a bill that would require a similar districtwide vote on any effort to carve up the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The bill, to be carried by Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Sylmar) at the request of the teachers’ union, would if passed hamper the efforts of Valley groups trying to break away from the huge school district.

“It would apply the same issue of fairness as the secession bill,” Cardenas said of his bill Friday, even as breakup proponents scrambled to counter this latest challenge. “I think a breakup is not a solution in and of itself, whether you’re talking about a school district, a city, or a family.”

Cardenas predicted relatively swift passage of the bill, which must be introduced by Friday, saying, “We’re dealing with the same Legislature, the same constituents” as when the secession bill was passed.

Others, including one of the lawmakers who carried the secession bill, said Cardenas had misread the Legislature on this one and should expect nothing less than a battle.

Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge), who co-sponsored the secession bill with Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks), said the two were forced into making the secession bill open to a citywide vote because that was the only way they could get it passed. The main reason for the measure was to strip the City Council of its veto power over such breakaway campaigns, and a citywide vote was the compromise.

“Cardenas is indefensible from any policy perspective,” McClintock said Friday. “He has launched an unprovoked attack not only on the parents of the San Fernando Valley but the parents in South-Central, and everywhere parents want to take their schools back. He had a choice--to side with parents or side with the union. He chose the union.”

Currently, it is up to the state Board of Education to decide who gets to vote on reorganization of a school district. Whether the issue even makes it to the ballot can be influenced by everything from political pressure to legal mandates that forbid radically altering the racial makeup of a given district, said attorney Jesus Quinonez, who represents United Teachers-Los Angeles.

The 11-member board is appointed by the governor, and one state education source suggested neither the board nor the governor would rush to support a bill that took power away from the board. Such a bill “would be DOA on the governor’s desk,” the source predicted.

Facing increasing heat in the secession-obsessed Valley, UTLA officials began to consider legislation two months ago that would give all voters in the district, rather than just Valley residents, a voice in such a divorce.

“If that was fair in the case of the proposed breakup of the city, it’s fair for the LAUSD,” UTLA President Day Higuchi said. “It’s a fallacy to think that no one else [besides Valley residents] has a right to vote,” he added, noting that 13,000 students are bused from other areas of the city to Valley schools. “And all of them have parents.”

While opponents of a proposed district breakup were making such arguments Friday, proponents were taking a diametrically opposed stance--carrying on a squabble that has continued for years.

“It is nobody’s business in San Pedro how people in Chatsworth want to govern their city or their schools,” McClintock said.

Former Assemblywoman Paula Boland, who has helped drive both the secession and school district breakup efforts, called the bill yet another effort to “thwart the will of the people and democracy.”

“It’s too bad a Valley politician would do this,” Boland said.

Bill Lambert, UTLA’s director of governmental relations, said the language of the Cardenas bill “was just lifted from the [city secession] bill. Why would they not give the same privilege to the school district?”