Formulas for Unfairness

The state’s Urban Impact Aid program was passed in 1977 to ease the financial problems of unified school districts with large numbers of minority students. So it is hardly credible that what the Legislature had in mind when it enacted the program was to block the flow of aid to inner-city schools with a majority of bilingual, bicultural pupils from poor families.

But that’s what has happened to some school districts that are forced to operate under formulas drawn up 10 years ago--formulas that do not reflect the tremendous financial effects that the changes in minority makeup have brought about. The failure to make those adjustments in the way funds are distributed under the state Urban Impact Aid program is neither reasonable nor fair.

The Garden Grove Unified School District goes even further in describing the way it feels about the formulas. It says that the old formulas are unconstitutional.

The Garden Grove district has filed a lawsuit contending that the state’s failure to reflect enrollment changes is depriving thousands of minority students of their fair share of education money. Garden Grove now receives nothing from the state program. But the number of Latino students in the district has doubled since the program began 10 years ago, and the Asian student enrollment has increased sixfold. If those changes had been taken into consideration, the district says, it would be receiving $530,000 this year.

One problem that might be keeping the state Department of Education and the Legislature from updating the formulas is that there is not enough money to go around as it is. Revising the formulas, without adding money to the program, might well mean that if school districts like Garden Grove were to get their fair share, the money would come out of the pockets of other school districts that now benefit from the formulas.

The Santa Ana Unified School District now uses all of the money that it receives to help finance its bilingual-education program. Under a new formula, it would get more than it gets now. But the possibility that other districts would get less money, or none at all, creates an incentive in Sacramento to do nothing.

It also is possible that Garden Grove will win the battle but still lose the war. Even if the district prevails in court, the governor has not included funds for the urban-impact program in his proposed budget for next year. And educators in many districts are complaining that bilingual programs are still mandated while money needed to provide them is being cut.

It’s difficult to determine at this point what the final state budget will look like and what restorations will be made in the programs cut. But in the distribution of any state school funds, Garden Grove’s point that they should be distributed equitably is something that both the governor and the Legislature must take into account.