Split From School District Seen as Unifying Valley

The racial segregation issue has captured most of the attention in the debate over whether the San Fernando Valley should break away from the Los Angeles Unified School District.

On the surface, it looks like a racial question. A Valley school district would be almost 27% white compared to the school district’s present 13%, according to a 1991 Times analysis.

And it’s hard to forget that white, middle-class Valley neighborhoods produced Bustop, the militant and politically powerful opposition in the 1970s to efforts to desegregate the district through busing.

That is why Valley school separation appears to add up to another attempt for the white Valley to remain as white as possible.

But, like everything else in life, Valley separation is more complicated than it seems. I found that out Thursday when I talked to Joe Gray, an African-American businessman who is past president of the Valley’s Pacoima Chamber of Commerce. “I definitely favor the breakup,” he said. “It is not a racial issue.”

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I’d been given Gray’s name by Steve Glazer, the press spokesman for state Sen. David A. Roberti. The senator has become a strong advocate of Valley separation after he switched from a central city district to one anchored on the northern side of the Santa Monica Mountains.

We met at the Pacoima chamber office, where Gray was among the hosts of a meeting promoting economic development in the northeast Valley area. Pacoima, once solidly black and now split between African-Americans and Latinos, is badly in need of more jobs and industry.

Although it’s firmly entrenched in the public mind that the Valley is the town’s white-bread capital, today’s Valley contains much more of a racial mixture than 30 years ago when subdivisions were filling up with white families fleeing the inner city.

Gray is part of the new Valley population. He lives in Lake View Terrace, an integrated, middle-class northeast Valley community that was vaulted into world fame when the police chase of Rodney G. King ended near a freeway off-ramp there. Gray has lived in the Valley since his discharge from the Air Force in 1980. He got his MBA while in the Air Force and now works as a financial planner.

We talked in a chamber conference room. A few people joined us, including Vivian Stabler, president of the Parent-Teacher Assn. at Charles Maclay Junior High School. She is also black and favors the Valley splitting from the school district.

“It’s being able to do things close by,” she said. “In a big city like Los Angeles, everybody is widespread. But here in the Valley, it is more like a family.”

Gray doesn’t even like the idea of busing inner-city African-American and Latino children into the Valley, as has been done for several years. “It’s not an economical means of integration,” he said. “The cost (of busing) can also be applied to education.”

Finally, he said, the Los Angeles Unified School District is too big and inefficient. “We are asking companies to be lean and mean,” he said. “But we are afraid to say anything to a public institution.”

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I came away from my talk with Gray and Stabler thinking about how your neighborhood can influence your opinions on life and politics. More specifically, the conversation brought to mind some studies on the impact that suburbanization has made on the political views of ethnic minorities.

Several academics and reporters became aware of the process in the ‘80s. For example, a 1987 study for The Times by political scientist Bruce E. Cain illustrated the change. He found that Latinos who moved into more affluent Valley suburbs became more conservative, more apt to switch their registration from Democrat to Republican.

This is not to say race isn’t an important factor in the debate. Many white Valley families would like to break away from the minority-dominated district. And many African-American families resent Latino moves for political control of the district, particularly last year’s reapportionment plan that created a new Latino seat stretching from East Los Angeles into the Valley.

But let’s not forget other things that are also important in American life--upward mobility, a secure home, a secure school.

These were some of the factors that drew people like Joe Gray to the Valley. Now they feel they’ve lost control of the school component of that equation and they see Valley separation as a way to get it back.