Assembly Eases Rule for School Breakup Vote

SACRAMENTO —  Breathing new life into the movement to split up the Los Angeles Unified School District, the California Assembly on Thursday passed a bill making it easier for voters to mandate a breakup of the sprawling, 708-square-mile district.

The bill, by Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills), eases the way for breakup advocates by lowering the number of petition signatures needed before the question can be placed on a ballot.

Parents in the San Fernando Valley--and beyond, Boland contends--have for 20 years sought a dismantling of the district as a means of improving education. Typically, however, they have run into a brick wall when it came to getting the idea past the Democrat-controlled Assembly.

Now, in a sign of changing times in which Republicans claim greater numbers and more clout in the chamber, chances for securing legislation aimed at breaking up the district appear better than ever.

The bill goes next to the Senate, where it must pass muster with Democrats there, who historically have been more open to the idea than their Assembly counterparts.

An elated Boland, who literally jumped for joy after the 43-24 vote, said the outcome was a signal that Democratic Speaker Willie Brown’s long grip on the Assembly has loosened.

“I think the point of this is the Assembly is not totally Speaker-controlled any longer,” Boland said, calling the vote historic.

Boland, who has tried and failed with similar measures since she arrived at the Capitol in 1990, admitted she has become emotionally attached to the cause.

“You’re not supposed to get married to bills, but I’m married to this one,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It was tears of joy that I had today.”

Five Democrats joined Boland in voting for the bill, including two key Valley colleagues, Richard Katz of Sylmar and Barbara Friedman of North Hollywood, who in the past had sided with Brown and teachers unions against such measures.

Rising in opposition to the bill, however, were several Democrats who passionately warned of divisiveness if the measure passed.

“This is a bad bill because it pits community against community,” said Assemblywoman Marguerite Archie-Hudson of Los Angeles. “It says, ‘We want to break up into little, special districts and grab all the goodies, and the rest of you will hang out there.’ ”

Assemblyman Wally Knox, a Democrat who represents the Westside and parts of the West Valley, praised the LAUSD school that his children attend, and said legislators were wrong if they thought creating smaller districts would automatically lead to better education.

“I see no reason--none, zero, zilch, none--to believe that if we replicate L.A. Unified’s bureaucracy six or seven times over on a theoretically smaller scale that we will gain a darn thing,” Knox said. “When we can’t solve real problems, sometimes we tinker with the process, pretending that it is a solution.”

In a departure from years past, Boland used a soft sell to win colleagues’ support. Instead of arguing the merits of dismantling the district, she cast her bill as a “voting rights” measure, calling it a “democracy bill” because it would allow voters to make a decision.

“This is so we can empower parents to choose to do what they want,” she told Assembly members.

The bill reduces the required number of signatures to get the issue on the ballot from 25% of all registered voters in the district to 8% of those who cast ballots in the last gubernatorial election.

The latter standard, Boland said, was the same threshold used to determine whether a proposed constitutional amendment makes it onto the ballot.

The measure also strips the school board of the power to veto ballot language.

In the Senate, Boland is counting on support from state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), who has a breakup measure of his own that is twinned with the Boland measure.

Senate committees on education and appropriations have already approved Hayden’s bill, which requires any new district to comply with federal court orders mandating racial balances and equal funding.

But Boland said she was not taking anything for granted in the Democrat-controlled Senate, even with Hayden’s help. “Now we start the fight over again,” she said. “It’ll be tough going again over there.”

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NEXT STEP

AB 107, the bill aimed at getting the school breakup question on the ballot, will go to the state Senate. Its first stop will be the Senate Education Committee, which will determine whether it helps meet educational goals. Next, it will go to the Appropriations Committee, which will scrutinize its cost to the state. If it clears those hurdles, it will go to the floor for a vote and, if approved by the full Senate, will land on Gov. Pete Wilson’s desk for his signature or veto.