L.A. Schools Bill Would Aid Latinos, Roberti Says : Education: Measure proposing breakup of district is to receive its first Sacramento hearing today. The legislation is opposed by minority lawmakers and the teachers union.

Seeking to woo Latino support for his measure to break up the mammoth Los Angeles Unified School District, state Sen. David A. Roberti on Tuesday said his legislation would benefit Latinos politically and educationally.

Citing academic research, Roberti said his measure--set for its first Sacramento hearing today --would give Latinos new opportunities to win seats on school boards and likely enhance education quality for all minority students.

Coupled with endorsements from two Latino academics, Roberti maintained that the research by University of Wisconsin political science professor Kenneth J. Meier “puts to rest the idea that this legislation is hostile to the interests of minority students.

“In fact, (the study shows) quite the opposite,” Roberti said at a Capitol news conference. “The status quo is hostile to the interests of minority students.”

After being elected to a San Fernando Valley seat last year, Roberti joined in reviving the breakup issue--which had long been pushed, without much success, primarily by Republican lawmakers and remnants of groups opposed to mandatory school busing. Its revival coincided with reapportionment last year that left only one all-Valley seat on the school board.

Roberti is not just proposing to break off the Valley from the rest of the district. Instead, his bill would establish a 26-member school district reorganization commission to develop a plan by July 1, 1994, to reorganize the 650,000-student district. The plan would be submitted to voters in the district in time for the Nov. 8 general election.

Among other things, the legislation would require the commission to limit the size of new districts to 100,000 students, distribute resources equally, take into account desegregation court cases and keep intact all current labor agreements.

The proposal has sparked opposition from minority lawmakers, the Los Angeles school board and the teachers union, United Teachers-Los Angeles.

Meier, who has studied minority representation in school districts, said minority groups should have nothing to fear from a breakup.

Based on a nationwide study of school districts with at least 5,000 students and a minimum of 5% Latino enrollment, Meier said “the key thing” is that minority representation is maximized when there are smaller school districts in which board elections are held for seats from specific geographic areas, rather than at large.

That increase in representation, he said, “sets in motion a whole set of factors that improve the educational quality that the kids get,” he said. For example, he said, it leads to the hiring of more Latino and African-American teachers, better access for minorities to programs for gifted students and less disparity in discipline among different racial groups.

Meier said that the point at which Latino representation on the school board will mirror the proportion of Latinos in the community is an enrollment of 60,000 students.

He noted that his study, which has not yet been published, “came about in a strange way,” after he received a call from a Roberti staffer who questioned the impact of reducing the size of a school district. As a result of the query, Meier said he studied school district data, which included figures for about 50 California districts.

He said he had not studied the breakup question because nationally the trend is to consolidate districts, not break them up.

At his news conference, Roberti also released statements of support for his bill from Raul Ruiz, professor of Chicano Studies at Cal State Northridge, and Leo Estrada, a UCLA demographer and a prominent Latino strategist in redistricting and voting rights cases.

But the Meier study was quickly dismissed by William Lambert, a lobbyist for United Teachers-Los Angeles, who said the Roberti bill would merely create “more bureaucracy.”

Leticia Quezada, president of the Los Angeles school board, said Roberti’s news conference was a reaction to complaints about his bill.

“It’s obvious that he’s feeling the heat of the criticism from minority communities that his move to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District is going to have very dire racial consequences.

“The fact that he’s having a press conference before the hearings . . . says to me at least he’s listening to the criticism and that he’s feeling vulnerable,” Quezada said.

Times staff writer Henry Chu contributed to this story.