A Bellwether Case on Secession From L.A. Schools

For the second time in its 14-year campaign to separate from the giant Los Angeles Unified School District and form its own school system, the South Bay community of Lomita is facing a widely watched decision in Sacramento.

How Lomita fares on Thursday, when its leaders plead their case before the State Board of Education, has huge symbolic significance for four other groups pushing to secede from the nation’s second-largest school district, as well as for Los Angeles civic and education leaders trying to keep it together.

If Lomita persuades the state board to allow an election on its secession proposal, it could become the first community to carve a new district out of the Los Angeles system since Torrance left in 1948.

“Lomita is the test case, the precedent,” said Ruth Perez, who is leading an effort in Gardena to leave the Los Angeles district. “What happens with Lomita basically says to the rest of us that [secession] is doable or not doable.”

Lomita’s is the smallest of the five current L.A. Unified secession efforts, and on the surface at least, its departure would seem unlikely to cause a ripple. It involves taking three schools and would mean a net loss of about 2,000 students from a district where kindergarten-through-12th-grade enrollment is nearing 700,000.

By contrast, a drive to slice two new San Fernando Valley districts from L.A. Unified would take nearly a third of the students to form two new systems of about 100,000 students each.

But opponents such as United Teachers-Los Angeles view the Lomita proposal with alarm. “It would be the first domino to fall,” said Steve Blazak, a spokesman for UTLA, which represents teachers in the Los Angeles district.

Like others trying to break away from the Los Angeles system, Lomita leaders cite their desire for local control, saying a smaller district and a locally elected board would be more responsive and more efficient.

State and county education officials agree that the proposed district meets most of the legal criteria, including fiscal viability. But the sticking points are whether the new district would upset racial balance and disrupt educational programs at the schools. The state Department of Education has recommended that the board turn down the city’s proposal on those grounds.

The state found that almost 2,000 students from outside the city would be displaced from Lomita schools and reassigned to nearby L.A. Unified schools with more minority students.

“The result,” the state report concluded, “would be a Lomita [district] with schools that are less integrated than they are now, and greater segregation and isolation for the displaced students.”

According to 1997 L.A. Unified statistics, the ethnic makeup of Lomita and nearby schools was 49.9% Latino, 20.8% white, 15% black, 6.2% Asian, 5.7% Filipino, 1.6% Pacific Islander and 0.7% American Indian or Alaskan native.

Whites would still be in the minority in a new Lomita district, but their proportion would increase to 36.3%, according to Los Angeles district projections. Slightly fewer than 40% would be Latino, 11.1% black, 7.4% Asian, 2.9% Filipino and 1.2% each American Indian/Alaskan native and Pacific Islander.

“This is not at all about race,” said Lomita City Councilman Robert Hargrave, a secession leader. “We’re already a minority district.”

Many students who are Lomita residents currently attend schools outside the city, including Narbonne High School in Harbor City. If Lomita gets its own district, it would need to create a high school, most likely by converting a middle school.

Stephanie Carter, a leader in the Valley schools secession drive, called the department’s conclusions “ludicrous.”

“By that reasoning, you could never reorganize the school district. If that’s the case, they should just say straight out they won’t ever allow it,” said Carter, who plans to attend Thursday’s hearing.

It was unclear how much weight the education department’s recommendation will carry with the 11-member board of governor’s appointees, which could act immediately after Thursday afternoon’s public hearing.

Four of the board members said they had not yet studied the issue and would not make up their minds until after the hearing.

If the board allows Lomita to put its proposal to voters--a requirement in creating a new district--it also must decide which areas would have a say.

The state education department recommended that voters in the entire district decide, a condition secession supporters believe would doom their efforts. Breakup supporters want the vote limited to the Lomita area.

The education department’s recommendations were a blow to Lomita leaders, who have been trying since the mid-1980s to form a new district in their city of about 20,000 residents.

“We’ve always felt that the Los Angeles district was just too big and unresponsive, and we believe that a small local school district is the best,” said Hargrave, who helped launch the Committee to Unify Lomita Schools shortly after his 1983 election to the council.

The group collected the required signatures in four months and won county Office of Education approval. But the State Board of Education turned down the proposal in 1987 after strong opposition from L.A. Unified, then-state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig and the teachers unions.

Secession leaders said that since then, the community has continued to grow more frustrated with the Los Angeles system.

“There is so much bureaucracy and a lot of waste” in the Los Angeles district, Hargrave said. “We believe we can run a better, more efficient school system, even if we have to do it on less money.”

So secession backers decided to try again, circulating new petitions and submitting an updated application to the county. They have shared advice and moral support with leaders of secession movements that had since sprung up in the Valley, Gardena, Carson and South-Central Los Angeles.

The county approved Lomita’s new application in 1994 and early the next year sent its favorable report to the state. Hargrave said nothing happened until a couple of months ago, when committee members received word they were on the Board of Education’s agenda.

“We were getting stonewalled,” said Hargrave, producing copies of unanswered letters to state education officials.

“Now we’ve been told we have 15 minutes to make our case” at Thursday’s hearing, said Hargrave.

The state board session is drawing wide interest. Board executives said they have received much mail from both sides.

There is strong sentiment in Los Angeles from civic and education leaders that the district be given a chance at reform before any breakup is permitted. A 1997 UCLA breakup study urged that no steps be taken without first developing a master plan to guard against a haphazard, piecemeal approach.

“The answer is to fix it, not break it up,” said UTLA’s Blazak, reflecting views expressed by other secession opponents. “We don’t see [a breakup] benefiting the students . . . just creating more administrative positions.”

Except for providing some technical assistance, state Sen. Debra Bowen and Assemblyman George Nakano, both Democrats whose districts include Lomita, are staying out of the fight, aides said. Nor have Gov. Gray Davis, who has made education his top priority, or his education secretary, Gary K. Hart, taken positions, according to a Hart spokeswoman.

Hargrave said he is disappointed at the recent turn of events, but his group believes too strongly to give up.

“We really feel we can do a better job for our students,” Hargrave said. “All we are asking is to let us have an election. Just let the voters decide.”

Members of this year’s senior class were not yet in kindergarten when the effort began, he said. Hargrave’s own children have long since graduated.

“Generations of students have come and gone since we started,” Hargrave said. “It’s too late for my kids, but maybe my grandchildren will benefit from this.”

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Lomita at a Glance

Civic leaders in Lomita are campaigning to break away from the Los Angeles Unified School District to form their own system for kindergarten through 12th grade. Here are projected characteristics of the proposed Lomita Unified School District.

Estimated populations:

City: 20,500

School-age children: 4,000

Students in proposed district: 2,028

State-required minimum students for a new district: 1,501

Non-Lomita students forced to change schools: 1,924

*

Racial/ethnic makeup in proposed district

Latino: 40%

White: 36%

Black: 11%

Asian: 10%

Other: 3%

*

1. Lomita Fundamental Magnet Elementary

2. Alexander Fleming Middle School

3. Eshelman Avenue Elementary

Sources: City of Lomita, Los Angeles Unified School District and California Department of Education.