SCHOOL BREAKUP DEAD? DESPITE VALLEY MEETING MOST CRITERIA, OFFICIALS RECOMMEND AGAINST SPLIT.

Byline: Sonia Giordani Staff Writer

In a long-awaited report, state education officials recommended on Wednesday disapproving the breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District to create two separate San Fernando Valley school districts.

The issue now goes to the 11-member state Board of Education, which will hold a public hearing Dec. 6 in Sacramento to decide whether to kill the breakup proposal or put it before voters either from the Valley alone or throughout the district.

The Education Department report concluded that the Valley breakup proposal met seven of the nine criteria, including racial and socioeconomic balance reflective of the district as a whole.

But it said breakup would worsen already crowded campuses outside the Valley and make it more difficult for students to attend magnet schools, which the LAUSD mostly located in the Valley because of the availability of space.

The report acknowledged that Valley property owners would pay nearly 33 percent of a bond issue for new schools, while only having 11 percent of the students in crowded conditions. That was a major justification for the recommendation because the LAUSD must soon ask voters to approve a new bond issue to help build new schools.

``The idea that you can't form a smaller district is really absurd,'' said Stephanie Carter, co-chairwoman of Finally Restoring Excellence in Education, the grass-roots group driving the breakup movement.

She urged the state Board of Education to put the issue to the voters.

``That's what we're after. Do the people of the San Fernando Valley want two separate, autonomous school districts?'' Carter said.

``Hopefully by making the school districts smaller, LAUSD downtown would be better able to focus their resources and do a better job of meeting the needs of their constituents.''

The state board can reject the report's recommendation by ruling that the breakup plan meets all nine criteria identified by law. The report said that if the board does that, it should require a vote throughout the LAUSD area because of the scope and impact of the breakup. Usually, such votes are local to the area wishing to break off.

Romer pleased

The Los Angeles school board has taken no position on breakup but Superintendent Roy Romer said he was pleased with the recommendation.

``The staff's recommendation is exactly right,'' said Romer. ``Right now, we ought not divide this district in any way.''

He acknowledged that without the Valley's tax base, the plan to build 85 new schools in five years would be in jeopardy.

``So it leaves us severely hampered to build for the overcrowded areas,'' Romer said.

``We are not done yet with getting the revenue we're going to have to raise to complete these schools,'' he said. ``We're going to have to go to a vote of the people to get that done.''

FREE's proposal calls for carving the Valley's 168 public schools out of the LAUSD, currently the second-largest school district in the country with more than 730,000 students.

The two Valley districts would remove about 30 percent of the students from the existing LAUSD. The North Valley district would serve about 118,000 students, while the southern district would serve about 98,000.

The Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization considered the proposal in June 2000, deadlocking 5-5 after its staff commissioned a survey that found the proposed reorganization would cause a substantial negative effect on the LAUSD's finances.

The state report concluded that any resulting ``negative fiscal conditions are due to factors other than the proposed reorganization.''

The report found that the proposal would not disrupt the socioeconomic balance in Los Angeles public schools; all three districts would be minority districts although most of the white students in the LAUSD live in the Valley. Whites constitute about 11 percent of the district's student population.

The two failing criteria - the equitable division of property and facilities, and the smooth transition of educational programs - are significant, said state field representative Larry Shirey, who prepared the state report.

``We currently have overcrowded conditions. This proposal is going to exacerbate the conditions,'' he said.

The report contends that Valley schools would only relieve the LAUSD of about 11 percent of the unhoused students - students crammed into crowded schools - in the district while also taking one-third of the district's bond capacity away.

``Thus, LAUSD would remain responsible for 89 percent of the unhoused students while seeing its local ability to provide housing for those students reduced by almost a third,'' the report states.

The county's proposal last year suggested that the Valley pay $1.4 billion to the remaining LAUSD to address a presumed equity problem in school facilities. Shirey said the state does not have the authority to tell Los Angeles schools how to solve equity problems and is limited only to identifying them - and in this case, recommending against a proposal for breakup because of it.

Carter said some concerns about magnet schools and students who are now voluntarily bused to Valley schools are unfounded.

``This isn't going to be like the Berlin Wall. It's not, and everyone involved should take great pains to ensure no student will be displaced,'' Carter said.

But Day Higuchi, president of the teachers union that spent nearly $150,000 in the recent campaign to defeat Carson's attempt to break away from the LAUSD, said he is staunchly opposed to the Valley plan.

``It means that you're going to have more schools on a year-round schedule. And it's a threat to the class-size reduction in the primary grades,'' he said. ``All this will further tax the already overcrowded schools while at the same time cutting their ability to get bond money. There's no way to deny the educational impact.''

Access to magnets

The state report also concluded that the proposed reorganization could seriously disrupt educational programs by cutting off access to magnet schools - many of them in the Valley - and by cutting the ability to continue class-size reduction programs.

LAUSD school board President Caprice Young noted that many of the district's magnet programs were placed in Valley schools because those campuses had the space. Students in other parts of the district are now bused to magnets in the Valley.

``It's only recently we've started to create magnets in the south and eastern portions of the district,'' she said. ``So one of the things that would potentially happen in the Valley breakup, we could lose many of our magnet schools.''

Julie Korenstein, the only school board member whose district falls entirely within the San Fernando Valley, said she wants to see what the state board will do. She declined to comment on the substance of the report because she hadn't read it but said she doesn't support breakup.

``I don't support the major duplication of costs - two payroll departments, two transportation divisions, two boards, two superintendents and their staff - it all means less money for the schools,'' she said.

State Board of Education President Reed Hastings said Wednesday's recommendation is only one part of the process.

``The board looks forward to hearing from both sides at that time,'' Hastings said in a prepared statement.

State board members were directed not to comment on the proposal before the hearing.

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PROPOSED SAN FERNANDO VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICTS*

*All figures based on 1990 Census data

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