Reapportionment Los Angeles

A San Fernando Valley coalition attempting to overturn recently redrawn Los Angeles school board boundaries announced Tuesday that it has deferred until June, 1994, a campaign to place an alternative map before city voters. The Coalition Against Unfair School Elections, or CAUSE, had hoped to put a citywide initiative on the upcoming June ballot that would scrap a controversial redistricting plan approved last summer.

A San Fernando Valley coalition attempting to overturn recently redrawn Los Angeles school board boundaries announced Tuesday that it has deferred until June, 1994, a campaign to place an alternative map before city voters. The Coalition Against Unfair School Elections had hoped to qualify an initiative for the June, 1993, ballot that would scrap a controversial redistricting plan approved last summer to give Latino neighborhoods control over at least two of the board's seven seats.

With a new national political landscape on the horizon and local public education in turmoil, 1993 may finally be the watershed year for those who hope to see the San Fernando Valley wrest control of its 170 campuses away from the gargantuan Los Angeles Unified School District.

Organizers of an effort to overturn a redistricting plan that diluted San Fernando Valley representation on the Los Angeles Board of Education said they have enough signatures to qualify a rival plan for the June ballot. But the group said it doesn't yet know if it has a large enough cushion in case a large number of signatures are disqualified. "We needed 48,000," said Cecelia Mansfield, president of the Coalition Against Unfair School Elections, or CAUSE.

A Los Angeles School Board member from the Westside speaks to San Fernando Valley parents and school officials tonight, drawing charges from some parents that he is jumping the gun to campaign for next April's school board election against a Valley-based opponent. Board member Mark Slavkin scheduled a "community town hall meeting" at Columbus Junior High School in Canoga Park.

Almost 24 hours had passed since he was bushwhacked by colleagues and, if anything, Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden was angrier than ever that they tampered with his district and its boundaries. It wasn't, Holden insisted, that he had some obsession with keeping part of the 23-acre Santa Barbara Plaza in his district. "It didn't mean one iota to me personally whether I had Santa Barbara Plaza or not," Holden said Thursday.

Fearing a loss of clout for the San Fernando Valley on educational matters, a leading Valley business group has endorsed a ballot initiative drive to overturn a recently approved redistricting plan that fragmented Valley representation on the Los Angeles school board. The board of directors of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn.

Los Angeles Unified School District board President Leticia Quezada assured Valley business leaders Tuesday that she hopes to set aside differences and work with them to solve problems facing education. Quezada was addressing the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., which strongly opposed the recent remapping of school districts that resulted in the extension of Quezada's district into the San Fernando Valley.

A dozen Latino leaders who supported state Sen. David A. Roberti in a recent bitter election fight lobbied him unsuccessfully Friday to renounce his support of an independent San Fernando Valley school district. "My position is the same. . . . I favor breaking up the district," said Roberti (D-Van Nuys), the Senate president pro tem, after the three-hour session at his Van Nuys office.

A San Fernando Valley parent-teacher group, which fought a redistricting plan that carved up Valley representation on the Los Angeles Board of Education, Thursday announced a drive to put an initiative before the voters that would replace the new districts with Valley-friendly alternatives. The executive board of the 31st District Parent Teacher Student Assn. unanimously approved the ballot effort during an emergency meeting Thursday.