Acrimony with racial overtones has plagued the advisory council. The key issue: whether meetings in Spanish should be allowed.

By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 10, 2007

For months, parents on a Los Angeles Unified School District advisory council have disagreed over whether their meetings should be conducted in Spanish or English. Such arguments became so abusive that district officials canceled meetings for two months and brought in dispute-resolution specialists and mental-health counselors.

But Friday morning's gathering of the District Advisory Council proved dysfunctional in any language.

By one vote, parents censured their own chairman for alleged bad behavior, leading to a walkout of most Spanish-speakers. The rebuked chairman, Roberto Fonseca, followed them out of the room. Most voting for the censure were African American, adding racial overtones to the back-and-forth hectoring.

...

The current bylaws stipulate that parent meetings across the district must be held in English. A school-district lawyer, however, concluded that this rule is illegal and impractical. Many parents serving on local school councils don't speak English. Some meetings consist entirely of Spanish-speakers in a district where more than 266,000 students (and probably many more parents) are English-learners out of a student population of about 694,000.

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Fonseca, in particular, has been a polarizing figure, although on Friday he kept his cool initially, when a black woman walked up to the podium and shouted in his face: "You are totally out of order!" Later, though, on one motion, an impatient Fonseca tried to shut down public comment. "I will not allow members of the public to speak," he said.

Chris Downing, an administrator with the parent branch, intervened, as he frequently has: "The chairperson does not have the right to violate the law." Downing then turned to the unruly audience: "Raise your hand if you want to have a nice calm meeting. . . . Take a deep breath."

Later, Fonseca ruled that a two-thirds vote would be needed to censure him. The district's lawyer, John Walsh, disagreed, but Fonseca spoke out again and again: "Two-thirds! Two-thirds! Two-thirds!"

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-parents10nov10,1,3272273.story?coll=la-headlines-california