School Equality Decree OKd by L.A. Board

Nearly six years after a group of parents launched a lawsuit charging the Los Angeles Unified School District with perpetuating inequities between campuses in middle-class and poor neighborhoods, a divided Board of Education approved a settlement Monday that could radically redistribute resources within the vast school system.

But the board’s action may not be enough to keep the case from going to trial as plaintiffs and their attorneys threatened Monday to pursue the lawsuit if a dispute over the degree of compliance is not resolved.

The board voted 4 to 2 with one abstention to accept the consent decree, which would equalize district spending so that each school receives the same amount of money per pupil to pay for such items as classroom supplies and teacher salaries.

But after more than a year of negotiations between the district and plaintiffs, the proposed settlement hinged Monday on an amendment approved by the board last week that allows the district to be considered in compliance if 90% of its more than 600 schools meet the decree’s equality standards by 1997-98.

“If the (90%) amendment remains in the consent decree, we will go to court,” Peter Roos, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the board before its vote. “ . . . To allow 60 schools to remain perpetually out of compliance, we cannot agree to. Our clients would feel we’d sold them down the river.”

Attorneys representing the district and the plaintiffs are scheduled to appear before a Los Angeles Superior Court judge Wednesday to discuss the status of their agreement. Also involved in the proceedings will be United Teachers-Los Angeles and a group of parents who have challenged the proposed settlement. As intervenors, the two groups will be able to present their objections to the decree for review by the judge.

District lawyers said that if the principals do not reach agreement, the case will be set for trial this summer or fall.

Before it was amended, the proposed settlement stated that each school would receive the same amount of money per pupil based on the district’s average expenditure per student, and all schools would have to bring their spending within $100 of that average at the end of five years.

Board President Warren Furutani, who voted in favor of the amended decree, said the 90% goal was not meant to avoid full implementation of the decree. “The 10% gives us some latitude in regard to the process,” he said.

But attorneys for the plaintiffs said they had already agreed to measures in the proposed settlement that offered flexibility for the district, including allowing the $100 spending margin and exceptions to ensure that certain administrative positions were funded at every school.

Ron Rodriguez, one of four parents who brought the lawsuit against the district, added that the 10% leeway would mean that 60 schools, enrolling approximately 100,000 children, would not have to comply by the 1997-98 deadline--which he feared would only continue the inequities that prompted the suit.

“Personally, I don’t see how we could compromise,” Rodriguez said outside the board room. “I don’t think there is a compromise to equality. Sixty schools is too much.”

Rodriguez added, however, that he was open to discussion, and hoped both sides could reach agreement to avoid a long and potentially divisive trial.

Board member Roberta Weintraub, who abstained from voting, said she, too, hoped a court battle could be avoided and that the plaintiffs would consider the ramifications of a trial before deciding not to accept the decree.

“I’d hope you’d seriously reconsider your answer and avoid the tearing apart this will engender, not only in the Board of Education but in our communities,” said Weintraub. “Because there won’t be any winners, only losers if this goes to court.”

The class-action lawsuit, Rodriguez et al vs. the Los Angeles Unified School District, was filed in 1986 by a coalition of public-interest law firms representing a group of black and Latino parents. It contends that poor and minority children have received an inferior education because of staffing patterns that concentrate younger, lower-paid teachers in their neighborhood schools while more experienced, higher-paid teachers go to schools in predominantly white areas. The suit alleges that as a result of those practices, the district spends as much as $400 a year less per pupil on schools that have mainly poor and minority children.

The new parity would mean that schools with a substantial proportion of highly paid veteran teachers would have to balance their staffs with lower-paid employees--a goal that teachers union officials feared would result in mandatory transfers of their members, an act largely prohibited under their current contract.

Board members also amended the consent decree to bar the transfer of teachers and other employees without the consent of their collective bargaining representatives.

But opponents of the decree, ranging from parents to union members, say there are other problems with the agreement. Representatives of teh teachers union have said that they are concerned about how the decree will be implemented, and that the agreement does not address the fact that some schools may need more more money to serve their students than allotted under the decree’s stringent formula. Other critics have contended that the agreement will ultimately hurt many of the students it intends to help, since many poor children are bused to the suburban campuses that would be likely to lose money under the proposed changes.

Board member Mark Slavkin, who joined Julie Korenstein in voting against the agreement, said he supported the principle of equity among schools but did not feel that shifting money from one school to another was enough to achieve that goal.

“This decree is focusing on symptoms rather than on the causes,” said Slavkin, who said he feels the district needs to do more research on why some schools fared worse than others and on how they would meet the compliance standards. “We’re giving ourselves false hope that reallocation of the budget will resolve educational inequities.”

But board member Jeff Horton said the principle of equity and doing what is necessary to achieve it was the most important message of the decree. “This consent decree is about equality. . . . I don’t see how that is arguable.”