Parents’ Concern Transcends School Breakup Issue

On behalf of her neighbors in Huntington Park, Maria Zamora called early last week to ask if they should move to the San Fernando Valley. I thought she was joking but Zamora insisted that she and others around Randolph Street were serious.

They had just seen news reports of the L.A. City Council discussion on the proposed breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District and although a majority of the council declined to vote on the proposal, the prospects of dissolution seemed real enough to Zamora and the others.

“If they break up the schools,” reasoned Zamora, a mother of three school-age children, “won’t the Valley have the best schools? They’ll leave the rest of us with nothing to teach our children. I told my husband that if they do break it up, we should think about moving to the Valley.”

I told her not to start packing yet.

*

I suspect there are many parents like Zamora who are frightened about the future of the 640,000-student district. The school system may be too big and insensitive for many, but it still provides the best hope of educating kids in working-class neighborhoods like Zamora’s.

The schools in Huntington Park--a separate, incorporated city, yet part of the L.A. school district--have their share of problems. They are among the most overcrowded in the nation, with Huntington Park High’s enrollment approaching 4,000 on a campus built decades ago to handle half as many students. The teachers are overworked and underpaid.

Program cuts dictated by dwindling funds have decimated the number and quality of courses offered. And, of course, there is the specter of campus violence.

Despite the school’s troubles, Zamora and the other mothers of Randolph Street have come to trust the educators. They do the best they can with what’s available. Many of the parents, who can’t afford to pay for an education in Roman Catholic schools, have donated their time to help improve the local schools.

In short, they don’t want to see the district broken up.

During Zamora’s phone call, I tried to reassure her that, at least for now, there would be no change. The L.A. council voted 9 to 6 not to endorse the measure by state Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) that would create a commission to dissolve the district into at least seven smaller ones, and put the issue on the ballot. The vote to table the matter had no force of law, but showed how the 15 council members felt about it.

Then, a day after the council’s action, a key Assembly committee killed Roberti’s bill, which had passed earlier in the state Senate.

But the measure’s death meant little to the folks on Randolph when I visited them later in the week for a chat and a plate of taquitos .

As their kids rode bikes near the railroad tracks that run parallel to Randolph Street, the dozen or so parents said they were afraid a breakup of the district would eventually occur for several reasons. Samuel Perez, an immigrant from the Mexican state of Michoacan who is studying for the U.S. citizenship test, said the breakup proponents, most of whom live in the Valley, are more powerful than the residents of Randolph Street.

Most of his neighbors, Perez said, are too consumed by the everyday pressures of earning a living to match wills with Valleyites. “They are not going to give up,” he said. “They have money. They have the nice homes. They don’t live like we do here.”

The contention of many breakup proponents--that the real issue behind the proposal is local control of schools and not race--brought howls of derision from Perez.

“I admit that I am not a citizen of this country right now,” Perez explained, “and I cannot vote in elections here. What control would I have? It is not enough to be involved in the PTA or donate time at the school.”

As I listened, I recalled that in a column several months ago, I said that non-citizens should not be allowed to vote in local elections, believing that the right to vote should be held exclusively for U.S. citizens.

But I held my tongue in the face of the passion on Randolph Street. I was there to listen, not to argue.

*

As the gathering wound down, I returned to Zamora’s initial question. Why would she and her neighbors want to move out to the Valley?

“It is obviously a better place to live and the schools are much nicer than what we have,” Zamora said. “If they broke up the district, wouldn’t you want to move there?”

Looking at the gathering, hearing passionate talk of schools and neighborhood ties, I said, “No.”