Latino Leaders Fail to Shake Roberti’s Support for New School District

A dozen Latino leaders who supported state Sen. David A. Roberti in a recent bitter election fight lobbied him unsuccessfully Friday to renounce his support of an independent San Fernando Valley school district.

“My position is the same. . . . I favor breaking up the district,” said Roberti (D-Van Nuys), the Senate president pro tem, after the three-hour session at his Van Nuys office.

The influential liberal senator’s support gave the secession movement, long promoted by Valley business leaders and conservative forces, a significant boost.

But it antagonized Latino leaders, who said they felt betrayed. Latinos played a key role in the coalition that helped Roberti eke out a narrow victory in the June 2 special election in the 20th Senate District to fill the vacancy created when Sen. Alan Robbins resigned after his conviction for corruption.

“We feel really bad that he didn’t even talk to us before taking a position,” said Marshall Diaz, chairman of the Los Angeles County Redistricting Coalition, who organized Friday’s meeting.

“We gave the man a lot of support in the election. At the least, he could have said that he was studying the issue, and let it go at that for now.”

Diaz said that although half the students attending Valley schools are Latinos, many are bused in from south of the Santa Monica Mountains to make use of underutilized schools, especially in the West Valley.

The group opposes the campaign for an independent Valley school district because “we feel that Latinos will have little influence in a Valley district,” he said.

Roberti said that he “can understand and appreciate” the Latino leaders’ anger at his failure to consult them before endorsing secession, “but it wasn’t like I was oblivious to their concerns.”

Roberti said that both a Valley school district and the remaining Los Angeles district would be racially and ethnically integrated, “so I don’t see that as an issue at all.”

On Monday, after a meeting with leaders of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley, Roberti unexpectedly threw his support behind secession and said he would work in Sacramento to pave the way for placing the issue on the ballot.

Secession was revived in the wake of a recent acrimonious redistricting battle. On July 10, the Los Angeles City Council approved a redistricting plan that created a new, heavily Latino school board district in East Los Angeles but also eliminated one of two Valley-based seats. Among the secession leaders is school board member Julie Korenstein, whose West Valley district was reconfigured to stretch from Porter Ranch to Los Angeles International Airport.

In the past, secession movements have foundered on such thorny problems as how to divide up personnel, debts and property. The breakup also must be approved by a majority of the district’s 1.5 million voters.