School District Foes Look for New Strategies : Ballot: School voucher activists hope to enlist Valley parents who supported failed breakup bill.

Backers of a ballot initiative to create state-funded vouchers to spend at private schools said Thursday that they hope to enlist disgruntled parents who had backed a failed plan to break up the Los Angeles school district.

Sean Walsh, a spokesman for Excellence Through Choice in Education, which is organizing the voucher effort, said the group will make a special effort to reach Valley voters who supported state Sen. David A. Roberti’s (D-Van Nuys) bill to dismantle the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“Parents are crying out for reform,” Walsh said. “Every time the bureaucracy in Sacramento slaps down reform, another 100,000 or 200,000 parents decide that it is time for some real reform.”

The November, 1994, initiative would give parents a voucher, paid with state tax money, to pay some or all of the costs of any public, private or parochial school they choose for their children. The measure is opposed by many public school educators and officials on the grounds that it would allow the transfer of scarce tax funds away from financially strapped public schools. Walsh said the defeat of the Roberti bill in a state Assembly committee vote on Wednesday is further evidence that school and government officials do not listen to parents.

“We will be contacting organizations interested in the breakup of the Los Angeles school district to present our position,” Walsh said.

Robert L. Scott, chair of the Valley Advocates for Local Unified Education, which backed district breakup efforts, said many in his organization will end up supporting the voucher initiative.

“A lot of people in our group who started out saying the voucher initiative would hurt public schools have switched thinking and are now saying, ‘Every man for himself,’ that the only alternative now is to empower yourself,” Scott said.

But other parents and community activists in the San Fernando Valley, headquarters of the district breakup campaign, say they are skeptical that large numbers of voters, unhappy with the sprawling, 640,000-student city school district, will now support a voucher system.

“Those who are really concerned about their children’s future and the future of this state should be doing everything they can to improve public schools, not abandon them,” said Mark Novak, an Encino parent and member of Valley Organized in Community Efforts, a community group that favors district reform.

“If public schools collapse, and the voucher will ensure that, this state will never recover.”

Even so, many Valley parents say they are weary of battling with the district administrators and the school board over issues such as year-round scheduling, air conditioning and bilingual education.

Tarzana parent Malka Tasoff is one of many who have fought with the district. She started her activism in 1988, when Spanish-speaking youngsters were bused to her neighborhood school without the benefit of Spanish-language books or Spanish-speaking teachers.

“I don’t know any of my friends who don’t want the system broken up, it’s that dramatic,” she said. “We’re all waiting to see what’s going to happen next.”

Sandra Klasky, a member of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. and co-chair of the group’s education committee, believes that the defeat of the bill to break up the Los Angeles school district will create new support for the voucher initiative.

“My sense is that many in the Valley really are dissatisfied with the schools and wanted the system to break up,” said Klasky, a fundraiser for the Cal State Northridge department of education.

“Some people are saying, ‘We don’t care if the voucher system doesn’t work, we just want a change.’ That is real shortsighted, but there is definitely some of that going on.”

Klasky said voters who support the voucher initiative out of frustration with the school district would regret their decision, should it be approved.

Steve Swatt, a spokesman for the campaign against the voucher system, said he believes that San Fernando Valley voters, as well as those statewide, will not approve the initiative because it contains loopholes that may lead to fraud and other abuses and could prove costly to taxpayers.