State to Allow Vote on School Secession : Education: The proposed Eastview transfer could appear on the November ballot. The Los Angeles district has not decided whether to appeal.

Parents in the Eastview section of Rancho Palos Verdes have won another round in the long battle to remove their children from crowded Los Angeles schools and into the smaller Palos Verdes Unified district.

The transfer of 766 Eastview children had been blocked by the Los Angeles Unified School District. However, the state Board of Education on Friday sided with the parents, clearing the way for the proposed transfer to be put before voters in November.

“It has taken us four years to get this far, and we’re very excited by the state board’s action,” said Craig Kelford, spokesman for Residents for Unified Local Education.

“We are looking forward to being a total part of the community,” he said, predicting that the 4,000 voters in the area will overwhelming favor joining the Palos Verdes district that serves the rest of Rancho Palos Verdes.

The controversy began in 1983, when residents of the then-unincorporated six-square-mile area annexed to Rancho Palos Verdes. Officials of the giant Los Angeles Unified system refused to approve student transfers to the Palos Verdes district, saying that would disrupt the court-ordered racial balance in Los Angeles schools.

Los Angeles has been fighting the Eastview parents because the transfer would upset the racial balance in half a dozen or more schools in the area. Without the predominantly Anglo students from Eastview, the minority populations in area schools would jump to 74%, district officials said. The schools are now about 60% minority, officials said.

Los Angeles school officials can appeal the state board’s decision by filing a lawsuit, said Michael Johnson, the private lawyer hired to fight the loss of these students and the two elementary schools affected by the transfer.

“The state board decision was wrong and the courts should reverse it, if the case is appealed,” Johnson said. The decision whether to appeal will be made by the Los Angeles Unified school board, probably next week, he said.

If the case is not appealed, a county committee on school district organization will set the boundaries of the transfer area and place the issue before voters, officials said.