Parents Face Uphill Battle for Eastview School Split : Secession: Proposal to leave the Los Angeles district gets a cool reception from members of a key committee. The district may not want to discuss it at all.

Eastview parents in Rancho Palos Verdes appear to face an uphill battle in their bid to remove their children from the Los Angeles Unified School District and enroll them in the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District.

At a hearing Wednesday in Downey, members of the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization postponed voting on a parents group’s request to secede from the Los Angeles district. Committee members said they wanted to give the parents and the two school districts more time to study the matter. The committee will vote on the issue in mid-July.

But committee members expressed strong doubts whether the Los Angeles district, which opposes the secession drive on grounds that it would disrupt integration efforts, would talk.

And at least two of the committee’s 11 members indicated that, barring any major developments, they were leaning toward voting against the Eastview parents’ request unless the Los Angeles district agreed to the plan.

“I don’t see that L.A. Unified is motivated in any way whatsoever to talk,” said committee member Donald M. Ross.

Rancho Palos Verdes annexed the Eastview area in 1983, but students have remained in the Los Angeles district. Nearly 800 Eastview students attend five Los Angeles district schools, including Crestwood Elementary School and Dodson Junior High School in Rancho Palos Verdes. The other three schools are in Los Angeles.

Six months ago, Eastview parents submitted a petition to county education officials to secede from the Los Angeles district, and two public hearings on the matter have been held in recent months. If the county committee ultimately decides in favor of the Eastview parents, the issue then goes before local voters.

If the committee votes against the Eastview parents, the group heading the secession effort, Residents for United Local Education (RULE), says it plans to appeal to the State Board of Education.

Eastview parents have argued that they are not dissatisfied with the quality of education in the Los Angeles district, but simply want to complete the annexation process.

Under state law, the Dodson and Crestwood campuses would become the property of the Palos Verdes district if the secession drive succeeds.

The Palos Verdes district, which has closed schools in recent years because of declining enrollment, says it needs to determine what the financial effects would be before making a final commitment on the secession plan. In the past, district officials have said they favor picking up the Eastview students and assigning them to schools it already operates. Presumably, the Dodson and Crestwood campuses would be leased, sold or closed.

But the Los Angeles district has contended that if the Eastview students are allowed to leave, its integration efforts in the San Pedro-Lomita area would be harmed because a large number of Anglo children would be removed. An estimated 69% of Dodson’s 1,700 students are members of minority groups, whereas 35% of Crestwood’s 450 students are minorities.

RULE spokesman Anthony Vulin told the committee that a good number of the Eastview students are minorities who would enroll in Palos Verdes schools. The Palos Verdes district is predominantly Anglo.

“It is not a white-flight issue,” he said.

The Los Angeles district also argues that if the Eastview children were allowed to leave, the district would be forced to relocate a magnet school that now operates at Dodson, and overcrowded conditions districtwide could become worse.

“We are badly in need of facilities,” Peter James, an attorney with the Los Angeles district, told committee members Wednesday. “A loss of facilities anywhere . . . would require at least compensation to build a new school in a crowded area.”

The parents group has suggested that the Palos Verdes district could lease the Dodson and Crestwood school sites to Los Angeles.

Nevertheless, James said the secession drive is a “bad idea” that probably will be opposed by the Los Angeles district “all along the way.”

Some committee members were critical of what they termed the Los Angeles district’s unwillingness to sit down and talk with Eastview parents--a charge James denies.

However, comments by committee members suggested that they are unlikely to rule in favor of the Eastview parents.

One member questioned how the two school districts could solve logistical problems such as personnel transfers. If the secession effort were successful, state law would allow some Los Angeles teachers at Dodson and Crestwood to take jobs in the Palos Verdes district.

Committee member Ross said no “compelling situation” exists to allow the secession drive to move forward. And member Nancy Jenkins, referring to the Los Angeles district’s concern over overcrowding, said there did not appear to be a solution to the “housing crisis.”

Although a Los Angeles district official told RULE members after the hearing that the district would be willing to talk further, Vulin said he was not optimistic that would happen.

“They are not going to sit down,” he said. “That’s not their modus operandi.”