By Ian Hanigan
Daily Breeze

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."