Suit Says State Formula for Minority Aid to Schools Is Illegal

A formula that grants special state aid to school districts based on 1978 minority enrollments is obsolete and illegal and deprives thousands of minority students of their fair share of tax dollars, according to a lawsuit.

Garden Grove Unified School District officials challenged the formula as unconstitutional this week in the Orange County Superior Court action.

At the center of the case is the state’s Urban Impact Aid program, designed to provide special assistance to school districts with bicultural, bilingual enrollments.

Freezing eligibility based on 10-year-old enrollment figures fails to reflect population trends in the last decade and is therefore unconstitutional, the suit says.

“When we know the demographics of a district such as Garden Grove have changed dramatically in that time period, then the aid should reflect that change,” said district lawyer Spencer E. Covert Jr. “That’s the whole purpose of the lawsuit.”

Garden Grove has seen a sixfold increase in Asian students and nearly a doubling of Latinos since 1977, yet qualifies for no aid from the program.

If current minority enrollment were taken into account, the district would receive $530,000 this year, the lawsuit alleges. Garden Grove’s budget for the current school year is $136 million.

Three other unified districts in the state would receive aid for the first time if present enrollments were used in the formula, according to the lawsuit, which identified the three as Lynwood, Norwalk-La Mirada and Riverside.

Included among the districts that would gain additional state funds are Santa Ana, Pomona and Long Beach Unified, according to the lawsuit.

Other districts, such as Los Angeles Unified, would lose aid, the lawsuit claims. Under the existing formula, the Los Angeles district received $32.3 million in 1984-85; that would have been reduced to $28.7 million.

“I see it as an issue of treating everybody fairly under the same set of rules,” said Dr. Ronald N. Walter, assistant superintendent for business in the Garden Grove district.

The formula challenged by Garden Grove is set by the Legislature and administered by the California Department of Education. Walter said efforts to persuade legislators to update the formula have failed. He said districts whose aid would be reduced or eliminated have opposed revision.

Last year, the Urban Impact Aid program was funded for six months at a level of $38.1 million. Legislators are expected to resume discussions this week on funding for the second half of the fiscal year.