Plan for Equal School Funding Debated

Los Angeles school board members disagree on controversial proposal that would change the district’s funding formula, equalizing its per-student spending to give more money to schools in poor and minority areas.

The plan would settle a five-year-old lawsuit alleging that the Los Angeles Unified School District has denied educational opportunities to minority students by spending less to staff and maintain their schools. If the settlement is not approved by the board by mid-January, the case will go to trial.

But Monday, during the proposal’s first public review, two of the seven board members said they plan to oppose it, contending that it unfairly penalizes schools in middle-class communities.

“I’m unalterably opposed to this. I will not support it,” said Roberta Weintraub, who represents the East San Fernando Valley. “We have enough intervention from outside sources already. In my opinion, we could probably win this in court.”

Weintraub and West San Fernando Valley representative Julie Korenstein argued that the plan would lead to mandatory teacher transfers, pit schools against one another as they battle for scarce resources and limit the district’s flexibility in dealing with such problems as overcrowding.

But proponents of the proposal to equalize per-school spending said it would ultimately benefit all schools by forcing the district to fund campuses directly, giving each school more control over how money is spent.

“I’m attracted to it because it does two things: It moves toward equity and it allows more local decision-making,” said Jeff Horton, who represents the mid-Wilshire area.

Under terms of the proposed consent decree, each school would be given a set amount of money, based on the district’s average per-pupil expenditure, with which to pay its teachers, administrators, clerical staff and custodians.

Schools with a substantial proportion of highly paid veteran teachers would have to balance their staffs with lower-paid employees, but decisions on how to spend their allocations would be left to individual schools.

“The end result is we would have equitable spending in our schools and decisions will be made at the local level,” said East Los Angeles board member Leticia Quezada. “This gives us the opportunity to move ahead of every school district in this country” in implementing school reforms. “The thing we have to ask ourselves is, ‘Is local decision-making worth the trouble this process will require?’ ”

The plan is expected to encounter opposition from veteran teachers, who worry about the prospect of mandatory transfers from schools that fail to meet the 1997 deadline for bringing their spending in line with the district’s average.

Parents in middle-class areas, which tend to have smaller schools that cost more to operate, fear that their campuses would lose funding to inner-city schools.

Westside board member Mark Slavkin cautioned that the board should move carefully in adopting the plan or risk protests from those who misunderstand its intent.

“I hope the debate can be focused on how you create an equitable system that preserves choices for all the schools,” he said. “If you jam this through, it’s perceived to be unfair by many, many people.”

The board has two more public hearings on the proposed settlement scheduled next month before it votes in January on whether to accept it.