2 Bills Would Update Impact Aid to Schools

No one gave affluent, almost-all-white Orange County much thought back in 1977 when state lawmakers enacted the so-called Urban Impact Aid program for California school districts.

The idea was to give extra money to large school systems with high concentrations of welfare-dependent and transient families, and of minority students.

As might be expected, schools in Orange County were not among the big winners.

Anyway, most of the county’s conservative lawmakers were philosophically at odds with many money reforms that year, in the Legislature’s first, half-hearted attempt to comply with the state Supreme Court’s 1976 Serrano decision, requiring that schools receive equal funds regardless of property-tax revenues.

When the lawmakers had finished working out the complex formula for doling out $64 million in Urban Impact Aid, Santa Ana Unified School District qualified for a meager $800,000 and the rest of the county’s school systems got nothing.

L.A. Districts Benefited

By contrast, legislators from Los Angeles County--who helped the Democratic leadership and Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s administration work out a compromise on a controversial $4.3-billion school finance package that year--sent well over half the Urban Impact windfall to their home school districts.

But times have changed.

Last week, Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress) and Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove) went before an Assembly subcommittee to argue that nowadays, Orange County school districts have many of the special needs addressed by the program.

That would be an easy point to get across if statistics by themselves--divorced from politics and interpretations--could make the case.

Since 1975, the number of welfare cases has increased 40% in Garden Grove and 34% in Santa Ana. And central Orange County has seen a tremendous influx of Indochinese refugees.

The (Impact Aid) situation has Orange County school officials walking on eggs.

Using the formula devised eight years ago, Garden Grove Unified School District would get $529,000, its first allocation under the program, and Santa Ana would get $1.02 million if the Legislature would simply follow the most recent data available. Meanwhile, six of the eight Los Angeles County school districts that got such a large share of the pie in 1977 would lose funds.

Allen, a former Huntington Beach school trustee, has introduced a bill that would do just that--apply the formula using new population data, but without adding money.

She agreed, under pressure, to phase in the changes over three years, to reduce the effect of cuts on districts that have been dependent on the extra funds.

“If we intellectually agree that Urban Impact Aid is important . . . , then we must put our money where our students are,” Allen told the Assembly subcommittee on educational reform last week.

The current formula, based on 1975 welfare statistics, school attendance figures from the same year and the 1976 poverty index, “is archaic,” Allen said.

Robinson, on the other hand, has a bill that would let all 19 school districts now getting money under the program keep their present allocation. But Robinson’s bill would add $2.3 million for four school systems that would qualify for the aid for the first time. It also would set cost-of-living increases for several school systems now being shortchanged.

Although the two bills represent rival approaches and can’t both become law, the subcommittee passed both measures. A hearing on the issue before the full Assembly Education Committee has been set for April 9, but neither Allen nor Robinson is showing any interest in compromise.

Spending Veto Seen

Meanwhile, legislative observers say Robinson’s bill would probably be vetoed by Gov. George Deukmejian because it calls for new spending. And Allen, a Republican, readily admits she will have a tough time pushing her bill through a Legislature controlled by Democrats with powerful delegations from Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, where school districts would lose millions of dollars.

The situation has Orange County school officials walking on eggs. Fearing they might anger one of the legislators, school administrators are careful to say they would be happy with either reform.

Although he is critical of the complexities of the present formula, Dr. Ed Dundon, Garden Grove schools superintendent, said he favors Allen’s approach “intellectually, I guess,” because it provides for similar reallocations every five years.

John Dunworth, assistant superintendent in Santa Ana, said he sides with Robinson “in a way” because he knows how difficult it is for school systems to absorb reductions of funds once programs are in place.

‘Not Looking to Hurt’

“We’re not looking to hurt any other district,” he said.

The $800,000 Santa Ana gets each year is all spent on bilingual education, Dunworth said. He said it would be extremely difficult if that money was cut off, or drastically reduced, by future population shifts and demographic changes.

For both political and practical reasons, Orange County school officials are hoping Allen and Robinson work out a compromise before the state’s urban giants start teaming up on both of them.

Newport Bay Dredging Funds May Be Delayed

Through a nifty bit of legislative persuasion, state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) may have won a major victory for Orange County environmentalists and all who use the pleasure-boat harbor at Newport Beach.

Or was it just the first round that Bergeson won?

What she did was convince the Senate budget review subcommittee not to appropriate $2.7 million for Upper Newport Bay dredging, contingent on future commitments of funds by Tustin, Irvine, Newport Beach, the Orange County Board of Supervisors and the Irvine Co.

The practical effect of such a condition would have been a year’s delay in maintenance dredging while more extensive restoration of the wetlands area is studied, planned and begun.

Depending on how heavy the rains are next winter, the overflow of sediment basins on San Diego Creek, upstream of the bay, could cause serious ecological damage to the wetlands, where several rare bird and waterfowl species breed, said Ron Hein, state Fish and Game wildlife manager for the area.

The two sediment basins are already full, said Hein.

“No one can predict these things,” Hein said. He added that extremely heavy rains could even move the sediment into the lower bay, where it could restrict navigation in Newport Harbor and would be much more expensive to remove.

The strong undercurrent of mistrust in legislative analyst William Hamm’s suggested condition was hard to miss.

But Bergeson convinced the Senate subcommittee that there was no reason to doubt the local commitment to the Upper Newport Bay restoration. The communities would do their part under a 1983 agreement, even if their money was not already allocated, Bergeson pledged.

The day after the subcommittee voted, Orange County officials told a meeting of local governments and state agencies involved that an engineering study that was supposed to be stalled until mid-summer might be completed by early May, after all. The representatives also talked about ways to move quickly after that, to build the first of three additional sediment basins.

Don Simpson, Newport Beach civil engineer hired to coordinate the effort, said talk of making the dredging appropriation conditional may frighten the local governments involved into moving a little faster.

Unless the Assembly restores the condition to the state budget, dredging operations this summer will at least maintain the ecological balance of the bay, even if little progress is made on further restoration, state Fish and Game officials said.

“The Senate has said, ‘We’ll try something that is unique in state government--trust.’ ” said Pete Bontadelli, state Fish and Game legislative liaison. Bontadelli would not predict whether the Assembly would do the same.

Judicial Endorsements Bill Supported by Both Parties

There is little doubt that Garden Grove Democrat Richard Robinson’s bill to prohibit political parties from endorsing judicial candidates was inspired by the current Republican fervor to oust state Chief Justice Rose Bird and her colleagues.

But the bill had considerable bipartisan support when it passed the Assembly last week in a 67-5 vote.

“Mr. Robinson is absolutely right,” said Assemblyman Ross Johnson, a La Habra Republican who said he intends to be very much involved in the effort to have Bird ousted by the voters.

Individuals can, but “political parties have no business” getting directly involved in judicial elections, Johnson said in a floor speech.