County Schools Win as Rural, Suburban Areas Stage Ambush

Turning the tables on urban Democrats, a loosely knit coalition of legislators from the suburban and rural areas of the state exerted new-found muscle in the Assembly this week and won support for a school funding package that left cities such as Los Angeles out in the cold.

The compromise will mean $69 million in additional funds for Orange County school districts. It will go a long way toward satisfying educators who complained their schools were not receiving their fair share of state revenue. The compromise, dubbed historic by many in Sacramento, is in part the result of an onslaught of letters from parents in Orange County school districts, which have been leading the charge for more equal funding, Orange County legislators and educators say.

John Perry, assistant superintendent of Orange Unified School District and president of the statewide Assn. of Low-Wealth Schools, said three school districts--Orange Unified, the Capistrano Unified School District and another one in Northern California--generated 50,000 letters, mostly from parents, demanding that legislators equalize school funding.

Equalizing school funding has long been a rallying cry in Orange County, because 22 of the county’s 28 school districts are below the state average in per-student base revenue funds from the state.

“I really attribute the sensitivity (of legislators) on the equalization question to the effort on the part of the parents,” Perry said. “Legislators tend to respond a lot more to parents than to (school district) staffers.”

The budget deal, announced Tuesday, ended an eight-day stalemate and led to Assembly passage of a nearly $50-billion version of the state budget.

While legislators from both sides of the aisle warn about making too much of the vote, some lawmakers are calling the deal “historic” because--if Gov. George Deukmejian and the Senate agree--it will free up hundreds of millions for money-starved suburban and rural schools by directing money away from urban districts.

At stake is the new money, roughly $1.4 billion over two budget years, being generated for schools by the landmark school funding initiative Proposition 98, which was approved by voters last Nov. 8.

The Assembly plan to implement Proposition 98, to be amended into a long-term school funding bill, was unusual in that it bypassed the Education and Budget committees controlled by big-city Democrats. That was possible because Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) set up a special team of negotiators to draft the proposal, including Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress).

Once agreed upon by the special team, the plan was informally ratified in a budget vote marked by a rare bipartisan alliance. Casting “no” votes were such members of the urban Los Angeles delegation as Terry B. Friedman, Teresa P. Hughes, Richard Katz, Burt Margolin, Lucille Roybal-Allard and Maxine Waters, all of whom could normally be counted on to vote for a budget bill.

Friedman, expressing concerns shared by other members of the Los Angeles delegation, said he refused to vote for the budget because he believed that the school aid package was “vindictive” and “a purposeful effort to get L.A.”

Assemblywoman Hughes, the chairwoman of the Assembly Education Committee, which was bypassed by the negotiators who put together the plan, said: “I’m not very pleased. Los Angeles is really getting worked over.”

Financing Out of Kilter

But while the Los Angeles Democrats were crying foul, normally powerless legislators from Orange County, suburban cities such as Glendale and rural and farming communities in California’s Central Valley were praising the vote because it recognized for the first time in recent years that school finance was out of kilter, with big-city schools drawing most of the dollars.

Allen called it a “foundation for fairness” for future education funding.

Orange County educators agreed.

“It’s been long overdue,” Capistrano Unified School District Supt. Jerome Thornsley said. “Their teachers are important, but so are ours. . . . People want report cards that measure up (to those of other districts) and they want accountability, but we’re not treated equally in funding.”

This year, Capistrano Unified parents and educators were so angry about the unequal funding that they decided to spend $4,000 a month to hire their own lobbyist in Sacramento to follow the school funding bills.

Orange Unified organized a contingent of 450 parents who paid legislators a visit last month to press them on the funding issue.

Educators say they will keep up the pressure to make sure the compromise doesn’t unravel. Thornsley said that in his district, the teachers union and school board trustees have written to their counterparts in the other 21 Orange County school districts asking them to keep pressure on their legislators. He, likewise, has written to other superintendents.

Assemblyman Pat Nolan (R-Glendale), who played a leading role in putting the deal together, said Republicans for years have complained that fast-growing suburban and rural communities were being shortchanged in the annual division by political leaders of the roughly $15 billion a year the state gives to school districts. Because they had no hard numbers to back up their contention, two years ago Republicans ordered a study of education expenditures. This year, they got their first report.

What the study showed was that when all the various special state financial aid programs were added up, the Los Angeles Unified School District was receiving $1,045 per pupil, San Jose Unified was getting $1,346 for each student, and San Francisco, Oakland and San Diego were getting $934, $810 and $702 respectively.

Cries of Outrage

Those numbers led to cries of outrage when lawmakers compared them to much lower figures for school districts outside the big cities. For example, in Orange County, Capistrano Unified gets $280, Orange Unified gets $206, and Santa Ana Unified receives $243.

“When we totaled the figures up, it confirmed what we had felt all along was happening. In fact, the disparities were far worse than we had thought,” Nolan said.

Aside from the question of fairness, Republicans also had the law on their side. In 1971, the California Supreme Court in a landmark decision ruled that the state’s system of financing public education was illegal because there was a huge disparity in funding between rich and poor school districts. The Legislature enacted a series of laws designed to bring about equality in funding, but the figures turned up by Assembly Republicans showed that a huge gap still existed.

Those close to the issue give many reasons for the disparities in funding.

State funding for schools is done in a variety of ways, from unrestricted financial aid based solely on the number of students in each district to grants made in support of more than 50 different special programs, each one designed to meet different needs.

Separate financial aid programs were created to provide extra assistance to gifted students, slow learners and poor readers. Others, with a broader sweep, were put together to provide extra financial aid to school districts with major problems, such as those under court order to desegregate or those that have large concentrations of poor and foreign-speaking students.

Pulled In Money

The Los Angeles Unified School district, by far the largest school district in the state, got in on the ground floor of all of the programs and was a magnet, pulling in money for just about everything.

The problem for other districts was that as a result of a series of lean state budgets in the 1980s, little new money was added to finance the special programs.

“There was a great manipulation by certain legislators on the categorical aid,” Capistrano Unified’s Thornsley said. “Los Angeles Unified is not a wealthy district just on the basis of base revenue, but they’ve gotten a lot of money through categorical funding.”

Teacher Wage Settlement

Helping to galvanize the legislators was the lucrative wage settlement the Los Angeles Unified School District recently gave its teachers. The generous settlement, which will boost teacher wages by 24% by 1990, rankled numerous legislators, who complained that other districts could not afford to pay their teachers as well, even though housing prices and living expenses in Glendale, Alhambra and other communities are comparable to those in Los Angeles.

The financing plan promoted by Republicans would take away some of the money that would have helped Los Angeles meet its new payroll, but legislators insist that the district will still get enough to finance the strike settlement package.

(Even though Los Angeles Unified, with nearly 600,000 students, will get less than most other districts on an average per-pupil basis, it would still get a lump sum payment of $50.7 million under the equalization plan. By contrast, Orange County’s 28 school districts, with 348,000 students, would split a total of $69.4 million. On top of that, school districts statewide would divide another $521 million in unrestricted funds that they could spend for such things as payroll during the current and upcoming budget years.)

What followed was an eight-day stalemate during which Republicans circulated computer printouts comparing education funding district by district. The disparities in funding cut across party lines. “The printouts sent shock waves through the Democratic Caucus,” Nolan said.

Normal Democratic team players such as Assemblyman Patrick Johnston (D-Stockton) were incensed. When negotiators came up with a plan to help rural and suburban districts, Johnston said he did not have any sympathy for Los Angeles because “they’ve pigged out so much over the years.”

The agreement that came together is designed to make school funding more equal than it has been by directing a disproportionate share of Proposition 98 funds to school districts that are now receiving less than others.

For example, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s share of the new money would amount to $86 per pupil. But districts such as Capistrano Unified would get an added $225 per student, Orange Unified would get $192, and Santa Ana would get $224.

Shuitt reported from Sacramento and Newman from Orange County.

SCHOOL DISTRICT SPECIAL EDUCATION FUNDING Chart shows what each Orange County school district receives per pupil for the more than 50 special education programs financed by the state. First column shows what districts now receive. Second shows additional amount they would receive under plan approved by Assembly this week. These sums do not include the base per-pupil funding each district receives.

Current Prop. 98 Per Additional District Pupil Per Pupil ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DISTRICTS Anaheim $235 $265 Buena Park 239 236 Centralia 219 85 Cypress 208 74 Fountain Valley 203 213 Fullerton 252 248 Huntington Beach 215 247 La Habra 252 203 Magnolia 242 217 Ocean View 250 238 Savanna 296 120 Westminster 254 172 Yorba Linda 249 160 UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICTS Brea-Olinda 324 214 Capistrano 280 225 Garden Grove 289 204 Irvine 242 139 Laguna Beach 404 69 Los Alamitos 389 72 Newport-Mesa 254 79 Orange 206 192 Placentia 255 203 Saddleback Valley 256 180 Santa Ana 243 224 Tustin 191 177 UNION HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICTS Anaheim Union 342 266 Fullerton Joint Union 517 253 Huntington Beach 367 209

Source: State Department of Education