CARSON MAY VOTE SELF OUT OF LAUSD VALLEY TO WATCH CARSON VOTE ON SECESSION FROM LAUSD.

Byline: Sonia Giordani Staff Writer

San Fernando Valley school secessionists will be closely monitoring the polls Tuesday when Carson residents vote on a bid to become the first community to break away from the Los Angeles Unified School District in more than 50 years.

If the largely working-class bedroom community decides to form a new 28,000-student school district and to elect a five-member school board, it could generate enough political momentum to boost an ambitious proposal to form two new Valley school districts.

``If the vote is successful, it would create a similar level of enthusiasm for secession in the San Fernando Valley,'' said Lawrence Picus, an education professor at the University of Southern California. ``And if it's not successful, it could diminish some of the enthusiasm here.''

The state Board of Education is scheduled to hold a public hearing Dec. 6 in Sacramento to review a proposal from Finally Restoring Excellence in Education, the Valley group working to form two districts.

The board will decide whether to put the issue before Valley voters, as it did for Carson voters. Valley school secessionists said they have high hopes for backers of Carson's Measure D, which has generated heated debate.

``We've worked with them for a long time and know how hard it is to break away,'' said Stephanie Carter, FREE's co-chairwoman.

``The question shouldn't be why do we want to break up this district,'' Carter said. ``The question should be why is having a school district with more than 700,000 students beneficial to the kids?''

If voters approve Carson's request, it would be the first time that a school district has seceded from the LAUSD since Torrance schools split off in 1948.

Districtwide, school secessionists said they're frustrated with a massive, impersonal public school system that is plagued by overcrowding, high dropout rates and dismal student test scores.

But while parents and taxpayers share common anger, state education officials said each breakup proposal must meet 19 rigorous criteria to maintain ethnic and racial balance among students and to ensure equal distribution of assets among schools in the old and new districts.

``They are separate proposals that must be considered on their own merits,'' said Larry Shirey, who is preparing the staff report on the Valley's school-secession proposal for the state board.

USC professor Picus notes that there are considerable differences between Carson and Valley proposals, beginning with size. The Carson proposal calls for a new district of 28,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade at 17 schools.

The Valley proposal calls for creating two new districts - covering the northern Valley and the other the south, with the two roughly divided along Roscoe Boulevard and Saticoy Street. The two new districts would serve more than 200,000 students.

And while the Carson secession movement is exclusively about schools - residents already have their own city council - some Valley residents link school secession to the broader call for cityhood. Richard Close, chairman of Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment, said he sees autonomous school districts as one of three main aspects of Valley independence, along with cityhood and an independent transit system.

``Whether it's the city of Los Angeles or the school district, the systems are too large to be responsive,'' Close said.

School secessionists, however, maintain that they're only acting in the best interests of students. ``It's a matter of our taking back our schools and being responsible for the public education in our own community,'' said Carolyn Harris, chairwoman of the Carson Unified School District formation committee and a professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills.

She said the move to form a separate Carson district has grown steadily since 1993. Parents are frustrated that the schools haven't been painted in years, Harris said. What she called the last straw was LAUSD officials' refusal to invest developer fees from the city's new housing projects into new schools in Carson.

``There are 85 new schools planned in LAUSD. Not one will be in Carson,'' Harris said.

But school officials and union leaders said problems of crowding, low test scores and poor campus maintenance won't necessarily be ameliorated by leaving the LAUSD.

``Secession is the right of the people who live in Carson. I haven't taken a stand either way,'' said school board member Mike Lansing, whose district includes Carson. ``My only concern is that citizens know all the issues and don't get caught up in the emotion.''

Smaller districts would face the same dilemmas of operating year-round schools or building new campuses to accommodate a growing student population, and the problem could be exacerbated in accommodating students now being bused to other parts of the district.

``They say they're crowded now. Wait until the 2,400 students getting bused out come back,'' said Steve Weingarten, spokesman for United Teachers Los Angeles, the powerful union representing more than 35,000 teachers that has pumped more than $50,000 into fighting Carson's Measure D.

Sonia Hernandez, executive director of the nonprofit Los Angeles County Alliance for Student Achievement said that while reform is needed in the district, secession movements demand careful consideration.

``The worst thing that could happen,'' she said, ``is people become so disgusted with the district that they just start breaking off in pieces here and there.''

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PROPOSED SAN FERNANDO VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICTS*

*All figures based on 1990 Census data

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