Tempers Flare at Debate Over District Breakup

Insults flew and tempers flared Tuesday night as educators, school board members and activists met in a fiery, fast-moving debate over whether to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“I believe the L. A. Unified School District is a humongous monster that can no longer go on the way it is,” said school board member Julie Korenstein, the evening’s first speaker and a supporter of the breakup.

“If you find it unmanageable, Julie,” shot back fellow school board member Jeff Horton, “I’d like to be enlightened as to why you ran for the school board.”

The debate was part of an unusual forum set up by the League of Women Voters at Chatsworth High School. Meant to focus attention on the intricacies of arguments for and against breaking up the district, the League paired supporters and detractors of the idea against each other, in one-on-one debates.

Supporters say taking apart the system will make education in Los Angeles more manageable and more responsive to local communities. But detractors raise the spectre of racism, saying that breaking up the district will cluster whites in the San Fernando Valley and minorities in the inner city.

Among the supporters was Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson, who represents the northwestern San Fernando Valley.

“It’s time for this monstrous district to be broken up into smaller districts,” he said.

Sandy Miller, an aide to state Sen. David Roberti (D-Van Nuys)--who as president pro tem of the Senate has become the chief legislative general for the breakup movement--said: “I can tell you folks that if we don’t break up this school district, we’re going to wind up with the voucher system and that’s the end of public education.”

The voucher movement would provide parents with valuable certificates that could be used to pay tuition at private or public schools, whichever parents chose.

Liz Guillen, an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said that Chatsworth High School--where the debate was held--was an example of a Valley school that is less crowded than Garfield and Roosevelt high schools in the inner city. The crowding will only worsen if the district is divided, she said.

But Raul Ruiz, a professor of Chicano studies at Cal State Northridge and a longtime Chicano activist, thundered at the mostly Anglo crowd of about 150 that small, local school districts will help all children.

“It would be a very good and positive thing if the children of South-Central had a closer, smaller school district,” Ruiz said. “I believe the children of East L. A. should have a closer, smaller school district.”

The same, he said, goes for children in southeast Los Angeles and the Valley.

“There is nothing wrong with that,” he said. Ruiz debated John Perez, vice president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles, who opposes the breakup.

“Most children in this state--for that matter, in this country--go to school in small school districts,” Ruiz said in an interview. “The district has a budget as large as the city of Los Angeles, one of the biggest cities in the world.”

The district as it is now organized has “an administrative structure made in hell,” Ruiz said. “It doesn’t serve any purpose other than to create some type of smoke-and-mirror effect for the general public.”

Ruiz said that if the district were broken up, administrators wouldn’t need to win the support of voters throughout the city to issue bonds to build a new school.

The argument over whether to divide the mammoth Los Angeles school district--the nation’s second largest--has grown in intensity in recent months, as local politicians and activists have signed on to one side or the other.

The movement to break up the system, an idea that has been bandied about for years, was started in earnest in 1992 by Valley residents angry over a City Council decision to re-draw the districts that members of the Board of Education represent.

The idea was to give Latinos a greater voice on the board, but in the process Valley residents lost power, because the new plan eliminated one of two seats based wholly in the Valley.

Bob Scott, who debated Tuesday against Guillen, organized a campaign to pull the Valley out of the LAUSD, and was quickly joined by Valley-based school board member Julie Korenstein, whose district was redrawn to include parts of West Los Angeles.

Roberti signed on as a supporter, and moved the debate beyond simply creating a separate Valley district.

Roberti submitted a bill to the state Senate that would chop the 641,000-student district into seven pieces, each with less than 100,000 students. The Valley has about 190,000 public school students, and so would have at least two of the new districts.

A similar bill was introduced in the Assembly, but failed under strong opposition from Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco).

Several minority groups and civil rights organizations have vowed to fight any breakup, arguing that inner-city, mostly minority children would be consigned to inferior schools with fewer resources.

Guillen said that although Roberti’s bill would require the new districts to comply with court rulings on desegregation and equal funding--thus allowing inner-city students to attend Valley schools--minority students and their parents would still lose power.

For example, she said, the new Valley districts might not have the resources to provide buses for inner-city parents to visit faraway districts and schools.

Ruiz disagreed, saying that the political ambitions of groups like MALDEF prompted them to argue to keep the status quo.

“They’re always saying the Valley is racist,” Ruiz said. “I’m from South-Central, and I’ve been saying break up the district for 20 years. It’s best for the kids.”