2 Sides Quietly Wait for State Report on LAUSD Breakup

If a divided Los Angeles is viable, as a recent study of San Fernando Valley secession concluded, could the Los Angeles Unified School District also be split?

Late next month, the state Department of Education plans to release its analysis of a school district breakup proposal. Supporters say the plan would create two, more manageable districts in the Valley, while opponents contend it would separate the haves from the have-nots.

For such a monumental breakup--no area has left LAUSD since Torrance in 1948--the advocates and adversaries have been surprisingly nonchalant.

Instead of lobbying members of the State Board of Education, who will decide in June whether to put the question to voters, the interested parties seem confident that they can make their cases in the Sacramento hearing, which in as little as one hour could lead to the division of the nation’s second-largest school district.

When the board last month approved a vote to decide whether to create a separate district for 21,500 students in Carson, “It was over before we knew what happened,” said Carolyn Harris, the leader of the South Bay city’s pro-secession group.

“We’ve been stunned ever since, it happened so quickly,” Harris said.

The Carson-wide vote is scheduled for Nov. 6, when the Valley school breakup question could also land on the ballot if the state board agrees. The state would define the voting area--a portion of the LAUSD, such as the Valley only, or all 708 square miles of the district--and breakup would require simple majority support.

The Department of Education’s analysis of Valley school secession is nearly complete. The 20-page report, plus more than 100 pages of attachments, will not be released until about 10 days before the board hears the issue June 7, said Larry Shirey, a spokesman for the department.

Supporters of Valley school autonomy are “just waiting for the report, and then we’ll see what it says and go forward,” said Stephanie Carter, whose group, Finally Restoring Excellence in Education (FREE) maintains that the new districts will be more responsive to students and parents.

LAUSD “is so large, you can hardly find who’s falling between the cracks until it’s too late,” said Carter, whose group gathered nearly 21,000 validated signatures supporting its petition for secession.

Even before the Department of Education’s report, the plan that will come before the state board has one strike against it: A Los Angeles County committee found last year that removing roughly 200,000 Valley students from 711,000-student L.A. Unified and placing them in two new districts would hurt the rest of the district by sapping essential funding.

Another report, produced by a private consultant for Los Angeles County, found that the breakup--creating north and south Valley districts separated by Roscoe Boulevard--would promote ethnic segregation. For one, the percentage of white students in the remaining LAUSD schools would decrease from 11% to 6%.

According to one state board member, Nancy Ichinaga, those negative conclusions are likely to carry great weight with the 10-member board, which received a positive report from the county on Carson’s application. (Gov. Davis has not yet filled the 11th board seat vacated recently by Monica Lozano of Los Angeles.)

Ichinaga said she will await the state’s report but from what she knows of the plan, it is not a sure cure for the district’s ills.

“You’d just create another big behemoth,” Ichinaga said. “It’s not only the size of the district that makes a difference. . . . I also think the leadership [matters].”

On that count, the former Inglewood principal said, “I think [LAUSD Supt.] Roy Romer is doing a pretty good job right now, so I think now is not the time to break.”

Ichinaga said she is concerned about the financial effect of such a breakup, but if the split furthers a racial divide, she is not worried.

“I think that the inner-city schools need to bring themselves up by their bootstraps and not depend on suburbia. . . . I’ve never believed in desegregating just for the sake of desegregation,” she said.

Organized parent groups have so far stood back from the breakup issue and may weigh in only if the proposal ends up on the ballot. The 10th District Parent, Teacher and Student Assn., the group of LAUSD parents outside the Valley, has not taken a position on the breakup plan.

“To create a smaller school district has some benefits, but there are also benefits to having a big district,” President Marya Ann Garvey said.

The Valley’s parent group, the 31st District PTSA, found three years ago that most of its members favored autonomy for Valley schools, but the group has not taken an official stance, its president said.

Because the state’s findings are unlikely to be much different from the county’s, supporters of Valley school secession may have to persuade board members to disregard any negative findings and order a public vote. But so far, the school secession group has done no lobbying of the board, Carter said, because the group lacks money to make its case otherwise to board members.

“I would expect that each one of them would give it their fair attention,” she said.

LAUSD’s board and superintendent have not taken a position on splitting off the Valley, said Fabian Nunez, the district’s director of governmental affairs. The district was officially neutral on the Carson breakup, but may weigh in soon on the Valley proposal and begin pressing its case with board members before the state report is released, Nunez said.

Analyses of school district reorganizations examine at least nine criteria. For reorganizations affecting California districts of 500,000 or more students--and LAUSD is the state’s only district that large--there are 10 more conditions. Falling short in two areas, ethnic integration and financial impact, can doom a proposal. “If we find those not met, [or] one of those not met, then generally the recommendation is not to approve,” Shirey said. The board, however, can disregard the staff’s recommendation, and that may be where FREE’s best chances lie.

“Our goal all along is to get an election and let the people of the Valley decide if this is something they want to do,” Carter said. “If it’s not, fine, but I think the only fair thing is to get it before the public.”

The movement to break the Valley into its own city, separate from Los Angeles, is a different issue from school breakup, Carter said, and she hopes voters will examine the two individually. Some of FREE’s members also support making the Valley its own city, but the group has been careful not to link the two causes.

“I wouldn’t want to see one issue used as a vehicle for the other,” she said. “I think the issues need to be looked at on their own merits.”

Also pending is educational autonomy for Bell, Cudahy, Florence, Graham, Huntington Park, Maywood, South Gate, Vernon and Walnut Park, should they also be removed from LAUSD. Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Norwalk) sponsored legislation that called for a study of a separate district covering those communities.

Petitions to leave L.A. Unified are circulating in several other areas as well.