Suit Charges Inequitable Allocation of School Funds

The Los Angeles school district has deprived black, Latino, Asian and poor children of an equal education because of decades of inequitably allocating district money and other resources, a Superior Court lawsuit contends.

Filed Wednesday by a coalition of public-interest law firms on behalf of two black and two Latino parents of Los Angeles schoolchildren, the suit alleges that minority and poor children are receiving an inferior education because their schools, when contrasted with predominantly white schools, receive less money--as much as $400 less per pupil in elementary schools--have physical facilities that are poorly maintained or too cramped, and are staffed primarily by inexperienced teachers.

“We want the school district to come up with a plan that remedies these problems,” said Richard Fajardo, one of the attorneys who will be litigating the case.

The suit compounds the legal problems already facing the district in a separate federal suit brought last year by the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. In that case, the NAACP charges and must prove that the district has intentionally discriminated against black students. It seeks mandatory busing as one means of ending segregation.

The latest lawsuit does not conflict with the NAACP case, attorneys for both suits say, because it has a narrower focus: It does not seek to prove intentional segregation, they said, but to show the existence of disparities between funds and other resources given to minority as opposed to white schools.

“This (suit) is a different side of the issue than the suit filed by NAACP,” said Fajardo, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “It is attacking the same kinds of problems from a different angle.”

According to Fajardo and the other attorneys involved in the lawsuit, the plaintiffs want the district to build new schools in overcrowded communities; transfer experienced teachers from the Westside, San Fernando Valley and Harbor areas to inner-city schools that they say are staffed primarily with less experienced teachers, and equalize the per-pupil expenditures.

Citing figures from an independent study by school board staff, the lawyers said predominantly white elementary schools receive $417 more per student than predominantly minority elementary schools. In junior high, the difference is $240 and in high school $297.

The attorneys also said that more minority and poor children are forced to attend schools that are overcrowded or year-round and that these factors contribute to an inferior learning environment.

At present, about one-quarter of the district’s 579,000 students attend year-round schools, the majority of which are not completely air-conditioned. The district also buses about 35,000 students from overcrowded schools to schools with available classrooms. Most of the crowded schools are in predominantly Latino and Asian neighborhoods in the Wilshire area and the eastern and southeastern regions of the district.

The board plans to gradually increase the number of year-round schools to accommodate the surging enrollment, expected to climb by 15,000 students a year for the next five years, largely because of increased immigration from Asia and Latin America and a spiraling birthrate. District officials say Westside and Valley schools will have to be added to the year-round-school list.

The district already has plans to build 16 new schools in overcrowded neighborhoods by 1990. But board members have complained that they are unable to build the schools fast enough, partly because the enrollment is growing too rapidly and partly because the state provides the money and requires five to seven years to process school construction applications.

Linda Wong, an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said that the lawsuit excludes the state and focuses exclusively on the school district because “the allocation of resources is within the complete control” of the district and does not require the state’s permission.

However, Associate Supt. Jerry F. Halverson suggested that the plaintiffs should have sued the state because it is the primary source of school funding.

The district lacks “the funds to keep up with enrollment,” he said, and suggested that to argue otherwise is “unproductive.”

He denied that the district has “perniciously or maliciously” assigned minority students to overcrowded or year-round schools or placed them in busing programs specifically designed to relieve crowding.

Halverson acknowledged that the plaintiffs “have a point” in raising the issue of inexperienced teachers in the inner-city schools. The district, he said, has tried repeatedly to persuade the teachers’ union to allow transfers of veteran teachers to those schools, but the union has resisted.

He also said the dollar discrepancies cited in the lawsuit are misleading because they reflect higher salaries paid to teachers in schools with more senior instructors, as well as the cost of busing minority children to the schools with more room.

Furthermore, Halverson suggested, the reallocation of resources demanded in the suit may not be feasible because of the district’s limited resources and ethnic makeup.

“There are only 18.2% whites in the district,” he said. “You could wipe out all the instruction for white students and not begin to fund what MALDEF is seeking.”

With this lawsuit and the earlier one filed by the NAACP, Halverson added, the district is caught between two competing interests.

“Both suits are asking for a change in resource allocation. . . . They’re talking about moving dollars from one kind of neighborhood to another kind of neighborhood, but there are only a certain amount of dollars. Which pocket are you going to put them in?”

But Joseph Duff, the NAACP attorney, disagreed that the two suits conflict. “We welcome the suit,” he said, because it focuses on an aspect of segregation that “was never really adequately remedied” in the desegregation case.