District Breakup Bid Gets Mixed Reviews

As a county education committee meets today to weigh a plan to split the San Fernando Valley from the Los Angeles Unified School District, the breakaway bid has gotten mixed reviews from parents with children in district schools.

While some parents with children in Valley schools support the plan to break up the 711,000-student school system and create two new Valley districts, parents with children in public schools south of Mulholland Drive want to keep the district intact, according to an informal sampling of a handful of district parents.

One of six school district breakup proposals, the Valley plan by the grass-roots group Finally Restoring Excellence in Education, or FREE, calls for two 100,000-student districts, roughly separated at Roscoe Boulevard.

By far the largest breakup proposal in the works, two new Valley districts could radically change the racial balance and financial viability of the nation’s second-largest school district.

Even so, several Valley parents with children in district schools are undeterred in their effort to dismantle a system they say is failing to educate their kids.

“I’m all for the breakup,” said Juan Medrano of San Fernando, a past PTA president at San Fernando Elementary School. “I think it is an injustice what the LAUSD is doing to the children.”

Smaller, independent districts would ensure that schoolchildren would have adequate textbooks and credentialed teachers, said Medrano, whose two sons attend district elementary schools in San Fernando and Van Nuys.

Medrano envisions more parental control over curriculum and management in the proposed Valley districts.

“Right now in the LAUSD, either you play their game or you are not welcomed as a parent,” he said. “I believe the FREE plan will allow us to see the school not only as a building, but as part of our lives.”

The Los Angeles Board of Education’s plan to break up the district into 11 sub-districts proves the system is too large, said Diana Dixon-Davis of Chatsworth, whose son attends Chatsworth High School.

“As soon as [Interim Supt. Ramon C.] Cortines arrived, he realized that this system was ungovernable and ordered 11 sub-districts,” Dixon-Davis said. “That supports the idea that smaller works.”

Jill Nelson of Granada Hills said that, at times, her sons have felt adrift in their large classes.

“My younger son says he doesn’t get called on enough and that he doesn’t get the chance to have input in class discussions, because there are so many kids,” said Nelson, whose son is among 34 students in his seventh-grade class at Frost Middle School.

Nelson said her older son, a junior at Granada Hills High School, dealt with the class-size issue by transferring out of two large English and history classes and enrolling in a class that combined both subjects. “He liked that, because the class was smaller and he could get individual attention.”

Still, Ana Soriano of Sylmar, whose four children also attend district schools, said she strongly opposes FREE’s proposal.

She plans to speak out at today’s meeting of the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization in Downey. The panel will decide whether to recommend to the state Board of Education that the breakup be put before voters.

Soriano objects to FREE’s plan because it would further segregate students in the new and remaining districts, she said.

The proposed north Valley district would have 17% white students and the south Valley school district would have 27%, according to Caldwell Flores Winters, an independent consulting firm that reviewed the plan.

After the proposed split, the number of white students in the remaining district schools would drop to 6%, the firm reported. Whites make up 11% of the current district’s student population.

“I don’t like the segregation factor,” Soriano said. “FREE wants to be away from minority and poor people. I want a district that’s inclusive of all races, because that’s the way Los Angeles is.”

Karen Bass, executive director of the Community Coalition, a nonprofit group focused on improving social and educational conditions in South-Central Los Angeles, said the school secession plan would mean 8,000 South-Central Los Angeles students currently in Valley schools would be forced to return to schools in their neighborhoods.

“It’s a total disruption of someone’s education,” said Bass, whose group claims 2,500 members. “Any breakup is bound to hurt the kids in South L.A.”

FREE members have vehemently objected to the report’s conclusions that its plan would promote racial segregation, saying students from outside the breakup areas who currently attend Valley schools could continue to do so, preserving desegregation programs.

Sheri Osborne, a Northridge resident who heads Advocates for Valley African American Students, said the main focus of parents should be on raising standardized test scores, lowering dropout rates, holding administrators and teachers accountable and making sure all children get a quality education.

“Parents are fed up,” said Osborne, who has two children in district schools. “I am willing to give the district a chance, but if the 11 sub-districts don’t work, breakup is not far from my mind.”