A Los Angeles
Superior Court judge will decide today whether to postpone the
March vote that could bring a high school to the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade
Wiseburn School District.
Judge David
Yaffe will preside over an injunction hearing requested by the
Centinela Valley Union High School District, which fears a K-12
Wiseburn would take 3.5 percent of Centinela's students and nearly
half of its tax base.
Centinela
has filed two lawsuits to prevent Wiseburn, one of its four feeder
districts, from seceding. The suits name everyone from the state
Board of Education, which approved the unification vote in September,
to the county Registrar-Recorder's Office, which oversees local
elections, as well as several other agencies.
Today's hearing
stems from a lawsuit that claims the state board failed to study
the environmental impacts of introducing a high school to Wiseburn,
which currently serves 2,000 K-8 students in the communities of
Del Aire, Wiseburn and west Hawthorne.
Another injunction
hearing is scheduled for Monday. It's based on the second suit,
which alleges that the state Board of Education improperly cut
a deal that limited the upcoming election to the voters of Wiseburn
rather than all of Centinela Valley, which includes all of Hawthorne,
Lawndale and Lennox.
Under terms
of that deal, Wiseburn taxpayers have agreed to keep paying their
share of the $59 million bond measure that Centinela passed in
2000.
Meanwhile,
it appears several players in the unification fight have discussed
delaying the election until at least June to let the legal wrangling
play out in court.
Local petitioner
John Peterson, who has spearheaded the Wiseburn secession movement,
indicated he would agree to a delay in a letter to the state Board
of Education dated Dec. 3. And an attorney for the state Department
of Education, in a letter dated Dec. 7, recommended that county
officials shelve the election until June.
Sources familiar
with the case said all sides had agreed on the delay except attorneys
for the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization
and county schools Superintendent Darline Robles, who have been
named as respondents in the second lawsuit.
Neither immediately
returned calls seeking comment.
But Peterson,
reached Thursday by telephone, said he and his fellow petitioners
were willing to compromise with Centinela by pushing the election
back until June. But since the county is holding firm, those talks
are now moot.
"We would
have agreed to that delay," he said, "but our preference was to
continue on with the March 8, 2005, election."
Proponents
of unification seem unfazed by the latest round of lawsuits and
potential delays that underscore the complexities of reinventing
an existing K-8 school system.
Residents
of Wiseburn, saying they were fed up with Centinela's crime and
subpar test scores, began a petition drive about four years ago.
That led to studies, a ruling by a county committee and an appearance
before the state Board of Education, which voted 10-0 on Sept.
9 to green-light the March election.
But officials
in Centinela Valley have argued that if Wiseburn bolts, it would
take about 50 percent of the area's tax base with it, considering
its wealthy corporate tenants. That would severely limit Centinela's
ability to pass future bonds, say attorneys for the high school
district.
And, they
say, Wiseburn's unification would strip CVUHSD of its diversity,
as it accounts for a significant number of Centinela's white and
high-performing students.
On Thursday,
Wiseburn Superintendent Don Brann said he isn't worried about
the prospect of voting on unification at a later date, so long
as there is a vote eventually.
"It doesn't
make that much of a difference," he said. "It's not a battle lost,
it's just a delay."