Senate Restores Urban Aid for Schools : Governor Expected to Sign Bill for Districts Hurt by Budget Cuts

Urban school districts with large numbers of poor and minority students that lost $87 million as a result of Gov. George Deukmejian’s budget slashing last July would regain the special state aid under a measure that won final legislative passage Friday.

In eliminating the funds three months ago, the governor echoed the complaints of Republican lawmakers that the aid program--known variously as Urban Impact Aid and Meade Aid--discriminated against a number of needy school districts because the formula for distributing the money was out of date.

The Senate voted 38 to 0 to send the governor a bill restoring the funds for one year and making modest changes in the formula so that additional school districts would benefit. A Deukmejian spokeswoman said the governor is expected to sign the measure, which is part of a compromise reached over the last few days between Democratic and Republican leaders and the governor that led to an agreement on the income tax rebate.

Partisan Debate

The compromise resolves, for the time being, a partisan debate over the funds that had contributed to the governor’s earlier decision to veto the entire appropriation. The old formula for distributing the funds, based on the levels of poverty and ethnicity that existed in 1978, meant that the money flowed primarily to schools in Democratic districts of the state. Under the revised formula, based on 1987 ethnic and economic conditions, many of the schools that will benefit for the first time are in Republican areas.

The funds are used by districts to cover the extra costs of educating poor and minority youngsters. Most districts have used the money to pay for programs to help students who are not fluent in standard English, or to fight vandalism and school crime.

Urban district officials were pleased by the news because many of the affected school systems, such as Oakland and Compton, were forced to make substantial cuts in staffing and programs to compensate for the loss of the funds. Compton, one of the poorest districts in the state, faced the most drastic loss of any district--about $3,000 per classroom--which would have required the elimination of successful dropout-prevention and remedial programs, officials there said.

Maintenance Funds

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which lost the largest amount--$37 million--wound up cutting $10 million from its 1987-88 budget, primarily affecting maintenance in inner-city schools and land purchases for new schools. The district also diverted about $1 million in lottery funds that were intended to go directly to the schools to other programs that needed funding, said Robert Booker, the district’s chief financial officer.

With the restoration of the funding, many districts would be able to repair much of the damage done to their budgets last July, although the addition of a number of other districts to the program means they will receive less than they had expected, said John Mockler, a Sacramento lobbyist for the Urban School Districts Assn.

‘It’s not like they have a lot of money now,” he said, “but this will stop the bleeding.”

Under the proposal approved by the Senate on Friday and sent to the governor, the total allocation of $87 million would be appropriated from the General Fund.

First-Time Aid

Los Angeles would receive $34 million, about $3 million less than it would receive under existing provisions.

But 23 districts statewide would receive the aid for the first time, including Lynwood, Garden Grove and Riverside.

Other districts stand to gain additional dollars, such as Long Beach, which has undergone dramatic demographic changes in recent years, primarily as a result of increased Asian immigration.

Sen. Robert Beverly (R-Redondo Beach), whose district includes parts of the Long Beach school district, authored the bill providing for the changed allocation formula.

“This is an important step for equity,” said Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress), who has tried unsuccessfully for the last few years to change the formula under which the urban school dollars are allocated.

Allen’s district includes the Garden Grove school district, which had been ineligible for the aid under the old formula, but has experienced a doubling of its minority enrollment--to 50% of the total--since 1978. Garden Grove filed a lawsuit against the state earlier this year, alleging that the distribution formula was obsolete and unfair. Under the Beverly bill, the district would receive $299,359 in urban aid this year.

The bill also calls for the creation of a nine-member task force to review the allocation formula and recommend whether the program should be continued beyond 1988.