School District Breakup Backers Find Ammo in Grand Jury Report

A grand jury report that says the Los Angeles Unified School District’s central leadership is out of touch with parents and students provides more evidence that the district should be split up, school secessionists said Monday.

The report stops short of endorsing a school district breakup, but “it’s another entity expressing many of the same things that we’ve said,” said Stephanie Carter, a leader of FREE, a group working to break off San Fernando Valley schools from Los Angeles Unified.

An accountant hired by the Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury concluded that reorganizing the district last year into 11 mini-districts only created more bureaucracy.

Schools are overcrowded, experienced teachers are leaving poorly performing schools, and multitrack, year-round schedules appear to have contributed to lower student achievement, the grand jury’s education committee concluded.

Carter’s group has proposed creating two school districts in the Valley to reduce bureaucracy and to make the schools more responsive to students and parents.

Supt. Roy Romer said Monday that the district’s reorganization is already accomplishing that goal by stationing administrators throughout the city.

“I don’t think the secessionists have an argument in this [grand jury report] to break up the district,” Romer said. “I think the point of the report is to make schools as close to parents and people as possible. I agree with that, and we’re doing it.”

The State Board of Education is scheduled to evaluate the breakup plan in September and decide whether to put it to a public vote.

A Los Angeles County committee concluded earlier this year that removing about 200,000 Valley students from the 723,000-student district would drain essential funds from the remaining Los Angeles system.

Separately, a consultant hired by that committee concluded that the breakup would promote ethnic segregation.

The grand jury, an appointed panel of county residents who serve as government watchdogs, found “that in general, a district is most successful when it is a part of a well-defined community and its policymakers are close to that community.” Furthermore, “the more homogeneous the district, the greater the opportunities for the success of the educational mission.”

Diversity Issue Open to Question

Carter disagreed with that point and noted that nonwhite students would make up the majority in both proposed Valley districts.

“I think one of the strengths of schools . . . [in] Los Angeles is diversity, and we’re not talking about carving out school districts that are not diverse,” she said.

A State Board of Education member, who opposes the Valley breakaway plan, said the grand jury’s report would have little effect on her final decision.

“I agree with its analysis, that the district is so large that . . . the bureaucracy makes it impossible for changes to occur,” Nancy Ichinaga said. “But how to remedy it, I don’t know.

“I think the Valley breaking up from LAUSD is really going to hurt LAUSD, so on that basis I’m opposed to it,” she said. “I think it will leave the inner-city schools really bereft of any experienced teachers. They’ll all go to the Valley.”

With the state board’s blessing, a second proposal to remove schools from the Los Angeles system is headed to a public vote in November. That plan would create a 21,500-student district in Carson.