Panel Gets Petitions on Breakup

DOWNEY —  A county education committee formally received petitions Wednesday from a group intent on breaking up the 710,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District and forming two independent systems in the San Fernando Valley.

During its regular monthly meeting at the Los Angeles County Office of Education headquarters in Downey, the 11 elected members of the Committee on School District Reorganization also decided to hold at least two public hearings on the issue in February. Dates have not been set.

“They are now in the information-gathering phase,” which will culminate with the committee making a recommendation to the State Board of Education, said Margo Minecki, a spokeswoman with the County Office of Education. The state board would decide whether to call an election.

Finally Restoring Excellence in Education, or FREE, collected 20,962 validated petition signatures calling for two 100,000-student school districts, with a boundary roughly along Roscoe Boulevard that would divide the Valley into northern and southern halves. A minimum of 20,808 valid signatures were needed to keep the school secession movement alive.

To begin the breakup process, FREE had to collect signatures from 8% of the residents who voted in the last gubernatorial election, according to state law. The county verified the petitions to ensure those who signed are registered voters.

The public hearings will help committee members reach a decision. Under state law, they are required to make sure that the proposed districts will not cause any substantial increase in costs to the state or any significant increase in school housing costs nor promote racial or ethnic discrimination or segregation.

FREE members said they are confident the two proposals will meet the requirements.

“We looked at those things beforehand,” said Stephanie Carter, a FREE co-chairwoman.

But FREE members acknowledged that they may need to revise the size of the proposed districts since the East Valley is one of the fastest-growing sections of the city.

Already, the proposed districts would be among the five largest in the state, according to the state Department of Education. FREE members say the new systems would be large enough to wield clout in Sacramento but small enough to respond to the community.

FREE is among about half a dozen organizations from the South Bay to the Eastside working to carve up the district.

No community has left Los Angeles Unified since Torrance in 1948. Lomita has tried to form its own 2,000-student district but failed twice, in part because the state education board believed the new district would be too small to operate effectively.