Panel Rejects Bid to Break Up LAUSD

A plan to dismantle the nation’s second-largest school district and form two school systems in the San Fernando Valley failed to win approval Wednesday from a Los Angeles County panel charged with recommending to the state whether to put the issue before voters.

The 11-member Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization voted 5 to 5, with one member absent, on a plan to split the 711,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District into three autonomous systems.

The proposal required a majority vote from members, who are elected by school district governing boards throughout the county. The split vote is tantamount to a negative recommendation to the state Board of Education, which will ultimately decide whether to call an election. Brenda Gottfried, a school board member with the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, was absent for personal reasons, county officials said.

Despite the outcome, school secession leaders refused to accept defeat.

“We have to remember that this is for the children,” said former assemblywoman and breakup leader Paula Boland. “We’re still going to the state in full force.”

During an emotional and contentious five-hour public meeting, county panel members, breakup activists, LAUSD officials, parents and teachers debated the proposal created by the citizens group Finally Restoring Excellence in Education, or FREE.

The county panel will forward FREE’s proposal and its recommendation to the state Board of Education. The state, which has no timeline, has not yet determined who would vote in an election--all district voters or just those in the areas proposed for independence.

The county panel based its recommendation on whether FREE’s proposal met nine legal criteria required under state law. After much debate, members decided it met all but the requirement that the proposed districts have sufficient funding.

“That was the big one,” said Lloyd de Llamas, committee chairman and a former city manager of several Southern California municipalities. He voted in favor of FREE’s proposal, in part because he wanted the issue to go before voters, he said.

Last week, a consultant’s report found that FREE’s proposal met most of the state’s breakup criteria but could promote ethnic segregation and lack sufficient funding.

The findings were based on public comments, U.S. census data and state and local school district documents.

FREE leaders criticized the report, claiming it lacked pertinent data and made inaccurate assumptions.

Even county committee members seemed perplexed.

“I’m not a CPA,” said Frank Bostrom, a business owner and a community planner in the South Bay.

Bostrom, who voted against the plan, said he was concerned about how the prospective loss of desegregation funding would affect the three districts, particularly those with highly regarded magnet programs.

The report found that a breakup would decrease the percentage of white students in the remaining LAUSD from 11% to 6% of the total student population.

Although the white student population is already decreasing in LAUSD, the report stated that a split could accelerate the process and impede L.A. Unified’s ability to maintain its current desegregation program.

“I’m not blind to the ills and ilks of LAUSD, but dividing into three districts won’t make the situation better,” Bostrom said. “The districts would be off to a financially shaky start.”

Opponents who attended the meeting, including United Teachers-Los Angeles officials, warned that FREE’s proposal could generate segregation-related lawsuits.

Terence McConville, L.A. Unified’s director of litigation research, told committee members the district was concerned about the displacement of 8,000 students who are bused into the Valley from crowded neighborhoods.

A breakup would require the remaining LAUSD to build at least four more middle and high schools at roughly $138 million, McConville said.

“There’s no room for the students,” he said. “It would be a hardship.”

Several committee members said they are not opposed to breaking up L.A. Unified, but they would have preferred to see even smaller districts proposed in the Valley.

The proposed Valley districts would be among the five largest in the state, according to the state Department of Education.