COUNTYWIDE : Wilson OKs Funds to Fight School Suit

Capistrano Unified School District officials say they are shocked that Gov. Pete Wilson has included $1 million in his budget proposal to fight a lawsuit initiated by the district to seek equal funding for schools.

“The value of a student in this district is far less than the value of students in neighboring districts, and indeed in the entire state,” Supt. James A. Fleming said. “It is simply unconscionable that the state of California can allow this inequality to exist, and now the governor is putting $1 million in the budget to fight us.”

Education specialists in Wilson’s Sacramento budget office say the state has historically set aside $250,000 in general fund money each year to retain attorneys for lawsuits related to the landmark 1972 Serrano vs. Priest case, which required the state to take steps to equalize state education funding.

With the recent lawsuit, the amount was increased to $1 million to defend the state, officials said.

In April, the Capistrano Unified School District spearheaded a lawsuit alleging that the state has not gone far enough since the Serrano decision and that the school finance system continues to be unconstitutional on the basis of inequality and inadequacy.

An additional 127 school districts in the state have since joined the lawsuit, including the Anaheim City, Brea-Olinda Unified, Buena Park, Fountain Valley, Fullerton, Magnolia and Westminster school districts in Orange County.

Officials of the districts involved in the lawsuit maintain that the funding discrepancy makes it difficult to provide educational programs and services comparable to neighboring school systems with higher levels of state funding. But state officials say that funding levels meet the Serrano vs. Priest requirements.

“We’ve already gone through several court decisions that say we are in compliance with Serrano,” said Carl Rogers, program budget manager for the state Department of Finance. “It’s as simple as that.”

Capistrano school officials and parents involved in the lawsuit said it was only recently that they learned that, buried in Gov. Wilson’s much-debated budget proposal, is a $1-million line item titled “For support of Department of Justice School Finance Litigation.”

So far, the Assn. of Low Wealth Schools, another plaintiff, has raised only about $200,000 to support the lawsuit, lobbyist Michael F. Dillon said.

“Clearly, this is a case of David vs. Goliath,” he said.

In terms of basic state funding, Capistrano Unified ranks last among similarly sized school districts in Orange County, and among the lowest of the 1,000 school districts in the state, Fleming said.

Last year, the district, which had to cut $10 million from its $110-million budget in June, received $3,056 per student, about $1,055 less per student than in neighboring Laguna Beach Unified.

If the district had received the county average of $4,072 per student in state funding for unified school districts, almost all of the $10 million in cuts, including the elimination of 144 teaching and staff positions, could have been avoided, Fleming said.

“I don’t think the governor understands what is actually happening here,” said Melinda Springer, a parent of two children in the district. She is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “We’ve lost a lot of programs. All children deserve equal education.”