They'll also have to pick five school board members to run what would essentially be a brand-new district.

Since Wiseburn won't formally become a K-12 unified school district until July 2006, there's a good chance that a newly created board and the current group of Wiseburn trustees will operate independently of each other for almost 16 months.

It's an odd scenario, but that's how it goes in the complex-yet-rarely-trampled world of public school district reorganizations.

And it's just fine with current Wiseburn board President Brian Meath, who isn't questioning the process. Rather, he says he's throwing his own hat into the ring as a candidate for the new board. In fact, all of Wiseburn's trustees are.

"It's a great opportunity and it's exciting," said Meath, who filed his campaign paperwork Nov. 19. "Being part of the initial process, you want to see it through to its conclusion."

That initial process began about four years ago by residents who had grown increasingly frustrated with the low-peforming Centinela Valley Union High School District, which serves the children of Wiseburn, a 2,000-student district based in west Hawthorne, and three other feeder districts after the eighth grade.

A 2001 signature drive to launch a Wiseburn-administered high school evolved into a proposal to a county committee and ultimately a hearing before the state Board of Education, which on Sept. 9 voted 10-0 to put the question of unification on the March ballot.

In a double victory for proponents of secession, the state board also decided that the election will be held in Wiseburn and not the rest of Centinela Valley -- as long as Wiseburn residents agree to pay their share of Centinela's $59 million bond measure, which passed in 2000.

As of Wednesday, all five of Wiseburn's trustees had filed their candidacy paperwork with the county Registrar-Recorder's Office to run in the March election, according to Superintendent Don Brann.

Assuming the measure passes, Meath said the current board would continue to run the K-8 system while the new panel focused on curriculum planning and finding a site for the high school. But if Meath and his four colleagues all win seats in March as Wiseburn Unified board members, they may be able to avoid holding separate meetings, he said.

Of course, all of this is uncharted water, Meath concluded. "None of us have served as board members of a high school district," he said, "so it would be a new experience."

But unification is not yet a sure thing, despite the fact that it would almost certainly win approval in a Wiseburn-only election, which would include the communities of Del Aire, Wiseburn and west Hawthorne.

Officials with the Centinela Valley district have filed two lawsuits aimed at quashing the split, which they say would strip their high school district of about half its property tax base -- this is key for the passage of facilities bonds -- as well as a disproportionate number of white and high-performing students.

One of the suits accuses the state Board of Education of failing to examine the environmental impacts of a Wiseburn high school when it approved the election. The other says the board overstepped its authority when it cut the deal that limited the vote to Wiseburn.

Both seek a ruling that would nix the election or expand it to all of Centinela Valley, which includes all of Hawthorne, Lawndale and Lennox.

In the latest legal maneuvering, Centinela Valley attorneys have filed a pair of injunctions aimed at halting the March election based on their existing lawsuits. Two Los Angeles County Superior Court judges are expected to weigh in on Dec. 9 and 10, though those dates may change.

Meanwhile, prospective Wiseburn school board candidates have until 5 p.m. Dec. 10 to file their intent-to-run papers with the county.

Danny Villanueva, who oversees school district reorganizations for the Los Angeles County Office of Education, said if unification passes, the top three vote-getters would win terms of four years and eight months on the Wiseburn K-12 board while the next two in line would earn terms of two years and eight months. Regular election cycles would return in November of 2007 and 2009.

What's still unclear, however, is whether the K-8 Wiseburn board would bother holding its regularly scheduled elections next November if the unification movement succeeds.

Villanueva said last week that he wasn't exactly sure. Superintendent Brann said he had more pressing concerns.

"The bigger question," Brann said, "is are we going to be able to beat back these lawsuits?"