Long-Term Investment

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley’s plan for a city program to provide after-school care for thousands of children is a bold and exciting one that would meet needs of both the present and the future. He deserves support at every step

There is a direct link between the caliber of help that a big city can offer to its youngest citizens and their degree of success as adults. Education is not ordinarily the city’s business, but the high costs of failure for the young and the limited finances of the school district make Bradley’s proposal most attractive.

More than 300,000 children attend kindergarten through the sixth grade in the Los Angeles district. When school bells signal the end of classroom day, more than 100,000 of them must fend for themselves until working parents get home. There are simply not enough established day-care centers to handle all of them.

Under the plan that Bradley outlined Monday, children could play games, do homework, be tutored in their shakier subjects, paint or spend time productively in other ways until 6 p.m. In addition to providing child care, the programs could help provide an atmosphere that would discourage later gang membership, drug use and dropping out.

The mayor has a plan to pay for the program, which no California city or school district could ordinarily afford to pay for under the strictures of Proposition 13. He wants to use some of the funds generated by higher property taxes under Community Redevelopment Agency programs. There now is a total limit of $750 million on CRA spending. Bradley wants it raised to $5 billion. In January he recommended raising the ceiling to finance moderate-priced housing and to pay for services for homeless men, women and families throughout the city. That spending would consume about half of the new money that a higher limit would make available. The child-care programs, at about $100,000 per school, would take about $40 million of the remainder per year.

To raise the ceiling, Bradley needs help from Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who originated the current limit. The mayor also needs support from the board of supervisors and court approval. The process, although complicated, offers the city the best hope for substantial new and unfettered revenue.

Raising the cap may also necessitate a change in the state law that requires that higher property taxes generated by redevelopment be spent on projects that further reduce blight in the redevelopment area. The mayor argues persuasively, however, that downtown was rebuilt “not just to create a skyline, but to lay a foundation for prosperity for the whole city.”

Even without an increase in the ceiling, 10 after-school programs could begin as early as September. The mayor plans to seek $2 million from the CRA for pilot projects in schools where the need is greatest.

Mayor Bradley’s ambitious after-school program, which would be the nation’s largest city-school partnership, could help protect thousands of children. The financing is unprecedented; but so is the need.