Valley School District Foes, Backers Meet

Opponents and supporters of a plan to create two new school districts in the San Fernando Valley squared off one last time Wednesday before a panel that will recommend whether to put the issue to voters.

About 50 people attended the third and final hearing by the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization, whose 11 members are elected by school district governing boards in the county.

“We want a system that will meet the educational needs of all its children and the expectations of their parents,” said Stephanie Carter, a leader of the group Finally Restoring Excellence in Education.

FREE wants the Valley to secede from Los Angeles Unified School District, creating two new districts, with Roscoe Boulevard serving as the primary dividing line.

Auto dealer Bert Boeckmann said the breakup is needed to correct problems in the Los Angeles school district, including overcrowded classrooms, low student test scores, lack of textbooks and fiscal mismanagement.

“Our petition is about one thing: quality education for our children,” he said. “We need to turn this horrific situation around.”

But John Perez, a vice president of United Teachers Los Angeles, warned that breaking up the district would duplicate services and increase administrative costs.

“It does not help student achievement,” Perez said before the meeting. “What improves education is having credentialed teachers in every classroom, and smaller classroom sizes.”

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Teacher Ed Kaz agreed, saying a breakup would not provide “additional money for teachers or textbooks.”

The committee April 5 will make public a preliminary feasibility study on the breakup proposal. It is scheduled to make a recommendation to the State Board of Education by June 7 on whether the breakup issue should be put to voters.

Los Angeles Board of Education President Genethia Hayes called efforts to split up Los Angeles Unified a waste of time and energy.

“I would rather focus on student achievement,” she said Wednesday afternoon. She did not attend the meeting.

Hayes also said the public will get less bureaucracy and more autonomy over schools under the reorganization plan unveiled last week by LAUSD Interim Supt. Ramon C. Cortines. It slashes the district’s huge central office and moves power over budget and instruction to 11 new subdistricts, three of which are in the Valley.

The subdistricts would be made up of a superintendent and an estimated 50 to 75 schools. An executive summary of the plan stated that the superintendent would “have substantial control over resources and the autonomy to make most decisions about the instruction of children.”

The Board of Education is scheduled to vote on the plan April 11.

“If they want more autonomy, then they’re getting that,” Hayes said. “Then the question becomes what more do they want?”

Carter, however, said that the Cortines plan is a temporary fix and that Hayes is out of touch with the public.

The county hearing was part of a long review process that could culminate with a vote of the people.

To begin the breakup process, FREE, a grass-roots group that has advocated a district split for years, had to collect signatures from at least 8% of residents who voted in the last gubernatorial election. In the Valley, that came to a minimum of 20,808 signatures; FREE gathered 20,962.

The state has not yet determined who would vote in the election--all district voters, or just those voters in the areas proposed for independence.

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No community has broken away from LAUSD since Torrance in 1948. The small South Bay city of Lomita has tried to secede and form its own 2,000-student district but failed twice, in part because the state board believed the new district would be too small to operate efficiently.

The proposed Valley districts would be among the five largest in California, according to the state Department of Education. Supporters say the new school districts would be large enough to wield clout in Sacramento but small enough to respond to the community.

Valley activists had advocated a school district split for more than a decade. FREE formed two years ago but experienced several setbacks, including losing its executive director and being overshadowed by the city secession drive.

There are about half a dozen school district breakup movements in Los Angeles County, including efforts in the South Bay and Eastside.

FREE is by far the largest and one of the furthest along in the process.