By Mary O’KEEFE

After over three hours of deliberation, a bit of confusion and a vote reversal, the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization voted to accept the petition for territory transfer of the Sagebrush area from Glendale Unified School District to La Cañada Unified School District.

Sagebrush is the far west section of La Cañada Flintridge. Students in this area attend GUSD schools. UniteLCF (La Cañada Flintridge), a grassroots organization in La Cañada, petitioned the LA County Board of Education to allow a territory transfer. The districts have been in negotiations for a few years in an attempt to come to a mutual agreement. They were not able to do so, which resulted in the meeting on Wednesday and the vote.

This vote in favor of the transfer went against the Committee’s staff recommendations; the details were released in the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting. The staff noted that several of the Conditions of the petition had not been met. The petition, according to the staff, had met four out of the nine Conditions. Staff members recommended that the Committee deny the petition for transfer. The Conditions were discussed and then voted on by the Committee. In nearly every successive vote, the Committee’s vote differed from the staff’s recommendation except Condition 7, which states the transfer “will not result in a significant increase in school housing costs.” The staff found that “reorganization would impact the school housing costs substantially.”

The staff stated LCUSD representatives had told the Committee during public hearings that it could not house all the petition area students should the transfer be approved. But during the discussion members of the Committee felt LCUSD would make every effort to house the students after listening to the presentations by the UniteLCF members and LCUSD representatives.

The vote by the Committee members was that Condition 7 had not been met, therefore agreeing with staff.

That was the only Condition not approved, but according to the State Board of Education, if just one condition is not met, then the petition would be denied automatically – and herein lies the confusion.

The Committee members as a whole felt they were not informed of this possibility.

In the staff’s comments in the agenda, it states: “The County Committee may vote to approve a proposal to transfer territory when the conditions contained in [the petition] (1) through (10) are substantially met. However, the Education Code does not mandate that the County Committee approve petitions where any, a majority or all of the conditions are substantially met. Likewise, the Education Code does not mandate that the County Committee deny a petition where all, many or some of the conditions are not substantially met. The Education Code provides the County Committee with broad authority to analyze factors it deems relevant and to assign to those factors the requisite weight they choose to determine how to vote on the petitions that come before it.”

Frank Ogaz, Committee chairperson, explained the confusion stating that historically the Commission was able to vote on Conditions and, regardless of passing or failing, the project/petition would not be affected. He stated that this ruling from the Education Code in which all Conditions need to be met is new.

The confusion resulted in member AJ Willmer recalling the motion he made to agree with the staff recommendation that the petition did not meet Condition 7, which brought the issue back to the Committee where a discussion and re-vote was taken.

There were questions on what “significant” meant in regards to the impact on LCUSD absorbing the Sagebrush students.

Ogaz broke the question down to its base level.

“The question is [would the impact be] insignificant or otherwise incidental? Yes or no, that is the question,” he said.

Committee member Joel Peterson, who is a former LCUSD governing board member, recused himself for much of the voting but did offer commentary and asked questions during the discussion period. He pointed out that the impact on the LCUSD schools would not be as large as the staff had stated, in part because of the permitting process. At present, according to the LCUSD governing board president Dan Jeffries, about 15% of the school’s population is permitted students from outside the area. This includes children of teachers and staff of LCUSD. Peterson pointed out many of those permitted students have been approved in accordance with space availability. If the district absorbs the 200 to 300 students from GUSD, those permitted students would not have their permits approved, theoretically leaving space for the Sagebrush students. Thus, he said, the impact would not be as great. Students who are permitted because they have family employed by the district are not subject to the reverse permitting process; once they are accepted into the district they stay in the district. A call to LCUSD offices to verify the number of out-of-area students permitted and those permitted with district families was not responded to by press time.

In the end the Committee voted again and this time found that Condition 7 had been met, with all members but Ogaz voting to approve the petition.

The hours of discussion, which included a public comment section when representatives from both the GUSD and the petitioners, UniteLCF, along with community members, shared their opinions and data. The day was a rollercoaster of emotion for both sides. At the beginning of the meeting, with the staff recommendation firmly in favor of denial, GUSD supporters were feeling cautiously optimistic; however, as the meeting progressed and many La Cañada residents, most of them Sagebrush residents, spoke during the public comment section, the Committee was obviously moving away from the recommendations of its staff.

With the confusion of what vote meant what, the audience was waiting for a decision – and in the end, it favored the transfer.

“I was very disappointed in the County Board of Education (Committee on School District Organization). I thought it was a three-ring circus the way their meeting was run. Even taking comments from the audience was unprofessional and there were holes in Robert’s Rules of [conducting] deliberations like that in taking comments from members of the audience. You have a staff report and you deliberate on the staff report,” said Greg Krikorian, GUSD school board member.

Krikorian also took issue with the conduct of the Committee as they went to the audience to clarify specific findings from the staff.

“Staff gave the Committee recommendations on specific areas, [where] there is a significant impact on our district,” he added. “What was really disheartening is them re-pulling that vote when they saw it was the one item that was going to impact the petitioners.”

He added there are a lot of questions on how the meeting was conducted and GUSD will review the situation to find out what the board and district should do next, including looking into legal actions on “the way the meeting was held.”

Superintendent Winfred Roberson echoed Krikorian’s disappointment in the decision.

“My concern, as always, is how does it impact our students. When revenue is lost, it impacts our ability to serve our students,” he said. “There was clearly a disregard for the financial impact or any impact on Glendale Unified School District. That was disappointing.”

He added he thought the staff’s analysis was a fair assessment.

“It is a bit disappointing to see the Committee completely disregarding the staff’s recommendation,” he said, adding, “The loss of $2 million a year is not insignificant.”

UniteLCF members viewed the meeting in a completely different light.

“We found the staff recommendations inconsistent with some glaring errors,” said Nick Karapetian, one of the chief petitioners of UniteLCF. “The analysis it used was wrong or superficial and didn’t go into depth.”

He added the members of UniteLCF felt a lot of what the staff report was insulting and seemed to make their rationale for the petition irrelevant.

“What we heard today was the majority of the County Committee felt [the petition] was compelling,” he said.

This vote to approve is a preliminary vote. There will be an California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review to assess the environmental impact of their decision which, according to Karapetian, could take up to a year. Then the petition will come back to the Committee with more findings and another vote will be held.

Karapetian said he feels positive about that future vote because the majority of the Committee voted in their favor.

He did make a clear point to reach out to Crescenta Valley residents.

“In no way does this undermine our neighborly relationship with the CV community,” he said.

“It’s very positive,” said Scott Tracy, former LCUSD governing board member who is in favor of the petition. “But it’s preliminary. It’s a big important step but we have a long way to go.”

  Mary Okeefe