School Turmoil Revives Southeast Breakaway Effort

Turmoil in the Los Angeles Unified School District has revived a movement by southeast Los Angeles County communities to break away from the mammoth school system.

At a special meeting of the Huntington Park City Council on Saturday, visiting council members from four cities that are now part of the school district angrily denounced the Los Angeles school board, saying it has neglected the educational needs of their children and ignored the concerns of the area’s parents and officials, most of them Latino.

Along with the recent controversy over the board’s buyout of Supt. Ruben Zacarias, officials at the meeting said they have lost confidence in the district because it has not built enough new campuses in the area to ease school overcrowding and is unable to meet special needs of local children.

“In Huntington Park the average parent has only 2.6 years of schooling. We have serious problems, and I don’t believe the school district is prepared for them,” said Rosario Marin, the city’s mayor.

The breakup discussion among the southeast communities is the latest in a renewed districtwide debate over the issue. It was largely prompted by the crisis over the ouster of Zacarias and disclosures of severe environmental problems at school sites, including Park Avenue Elementary School in Cudahy and a proposed campus in South Gate.

Last week, Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), an L.A. mayoral candidate, said he would consider the breakup idea. A San Fernando Valley group is holding a citywide meeting next Saturday on the breakup issue.

Also attending the southeast cities’ meeting Saturday were state Sens. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) and Martha Escutia (D-Whittier) and L.A. Unified board member Victoria Castro. The officials said a new district would probably include the cities of Bell, Cudahy, Huntington Park, Maywood and South Gate--whose council members attended Saturday’s meeting--plus Vernon and the unincorporated communities of Walnut Park and Florence.

Council members from Bell Gardens, part of the Montebello Unified School District, were present but did not express an interest in joining the other communities.

The southeast cities had discussed forming their own district in the past, but interest faded in the last few years.

Marin said a turning point was a recent school board meeting at which a group of prominent Latino politicians and civil rights leaders called on the board to rescind its order to strip Zacarias of his power.

The board did not change its position after hearing from the delegation, which included Polanco, Escutia, Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar) and county Supervisor Gloria Molina. “That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Marin said.

Although the Zacarias controversy triggered Saturday’s meeting, Escutia emphasized that breakup sentiment has been brewing in the area for several years. “This is not some kind of petty reaction. It’s a legitimate grass-roots movement,” she said.

Though interested in leaving L.A. Unified, officials at the meeting said they would not want to be part of another massive school district serving a population of more than 1 million, which some activists have proposed.

Alan Clayton, research director of the Los Angeles City/County Latino Redistricting Coalition, had proposed forming a district stretching from Eagle Rock and East Los Angeles to Pico-Union and southeast Los Angeles County, saying it would be among the largest school districts in the United States.

“Very small districts are politically weak,” Clayton said. Combining several areas would create a district represented by multiple members of Congress and state legislators.

But the idea was rejected by the officials from the smaller cities. “It would have a population of 1.2 million. That would be huge,” said South Gate Councilman Hector De La Torre.

George Cole, a Bell councilman, said, “Our needs are so great, the only way to address them will be through our own local control.”

Clayton said a district made up only of the southeast communities would still have a population of 325,000 and be more than 90% Latino.

Although emotions ran high at the meeting, participants said any departure from L.A. Unified would take at least five years and require thorough studies.

De La Torre said that over those years, the communities might find that leaving the district would be too costly or otherwise impractical. “There are so many hurdles; if the finances aren’t there we won’t have a feasible district,” he said.