Secession Drive Turns Its Focus to School Split

Leaders of the Valley secession campaign said during a citywide forum Saturday that breaking up the massive Los Angeles school district should take precedence over their drive to split the San Fernando Valley from Los Angeles.

“More people are dissatisfied with the school district than with the city of Los Angeles,” said Richard Close, chairman of Valley VOTE, the group pushing for the San Fernando Valley to form its own city. “Never before has there been such a force behind this issue. We have to seize the momentum.”

About 110 community leaders, parents, teachers and politicians from the South Bay, Eastside, Westside and the Valley attended the three-hour meeting Saturday to discuss their common interest in dismantling the 710,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest.

For more than a decade, groups in the Valley, Carson, Lomita and South-Central Los Angeles have advocated forming separate school districts. Saturday’s meeting was the first time all the groups met and agreed to work together as part of a new coalition called the All-District Alliance for School Reorganization.

“We are not here to gripe about the problems,” said Close, although leaders agreed that recent crises have spurred the momentum.

The latest problems to plague the district include the ouster of Supt. Ruben Zacarias, toxic contamination at the $200-million Belmont Learning Complex that threatens completion of the direly needed high school, and toxic and asbestos contamination at other campuses.

Parents complain of tangled layers of bureaucracy, low test scores, school overcrowding and outdated or undersupplied textbooks.

“The district is totally out of control,” Close said at the forum, held at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys. “Time is running out. There’s only one opportunity to educate a child. We must move quickly.”

Close said he hopes the group can gather and submit at least 65,000 signed and verified petitions to state officials by February, a move that could help spur legislation and support among local and state school board members.

Los Angeles School Board President Genethia Hayes called the breakup movement “hysteria” resulting from the board’s bold actions and said she “is not going to lose a lot of sleep over it.”

Instead, Hayes said she will focus her energy on improving student achievement and reforming the district. “By the time these people finish gathering their petitions, looking at the legal issues and wrangling--and believe me, there will be fighting, over how it’s going to work and who gets what--they will see a district that works.”

Those attending the forum--including mayoral candidates Steve Soboroff and Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs--generally agreed that people of all backgrounds from all parts of the city must unite to successfully break up the district.

“No system will work unless everyone buys into it,” Wachs said, generating a round of applause.

Several politicians have joined the growing breakup movement, including Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), who is also a city mayoral candidate.

State Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar), who for seven years has supported dividing up the district, sent a Nov. 10 letter requesting that the state Senate Office of Research undertake a study on how smaller school systems can “provide better accountability to the needs of students, parents and teachers.”

State Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) is drafting legislation to develop a plan to create smaller districts.

Earlier this month, the Little Hoover Commission, the state’s watchdog agency, recommended the appointment of a panel of community leaders and professionals to examine breaking up the district, which it called “a disturbingly dysfunctional organization.”

“We have no time to waste,” said Yvonne Chan, principal of the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center, a highly praised charter school in Pacoima.

Chan proposed that the alliance members divide themselves into four geographic areas but share resources, work together and meet regularly, beginning in a week or two.

District officials have warned that a breakup is more complicated than it appears, in part because about 14,500 students are being bused to outlying schools because their campuses are overcrowded.

Leaders of United Teachers-Los Angeles oppose breaking up the district because the resulting school systems could create more layers of bureaucracy and diminish clout in Sacramento, union leader John Perez told the crowd.