Compton Schools Face Twin Crises : Education: The governor has warned the district of state takeover if performance does not improve. It is also unexpectedly short of funds.

The academically struggling Compton Unified School District, which barely avoided a state takeover this week, is facing another assault from its most persistent critic and an unanticipated financial crisis.

Compton Unified escaped the takeover when Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed legislation Wednesday that would have authorized state control on the grounds that the school system is failing to educate its students properly.

Assemblyman Willard H. Murray Jr. (D-Paramount), a vehement critic of the school system, authored the bill and immediately vowed to reintroduce the legislation.

“I am utterly disgusted and disappointed with the veto because no one seems to care that 28,000 little, poor, black and Hispanic children are not receiving even a minimal education,” said Murray, who represents Compton. “If these were Anglo kids, these educational conditions would not be tolerated.”

In his veto message, Wilson said he agreed that “drastic corrective action is required in Compton” but that “local control” should be removed only as a last resort. He added that the district is “on probation” and that he would entertain similar legislation in the future “if there is not dramatic improvement in the performance of the schools.”

Despite their disagreements, School Board President John Steward said he accepted some of Murray’s complaints and did not take issue with the governor’s warning.

“Gov. Wilson offers no sympathy, and he’s absolutely right,” Steward said. “The one thing we all accept in this is that we have serious problems and that we’ve got to find solutions. I don’t know that we have a vision or have specific enough solutions.

“I give Willard Murray credit. He has accelerated something. He has forced us to look within, to look at ourselves. We have not been using our resources in a manner that is best benefiting our students.”

Improving achievement may be even more difficult now that the school board has pared $4.9 million from an $88-million budget.

The cuts, approved late Wednesday night, are likely to result in about 100 layoffs, including teachers, nurses, librarians, mechanics, painters and secretaries. According to union leaders, the district has made no provisions for running middle school libraries. Hundreds of students may get replacement teachers in mid-semester for instructors bumped out of jobs by transferred staffers, administrators and librarians.

“Now I hope that the state does take over,” muttered one volunteer who had lobbied against the Murray bill. She, like many employees, was upset over budget problems that seemed to catch top administrators by surprise.

District critics, including some parents, have periodically complained about issues ranging from school security and cleanliness to the quality of teaching and long-term academic strategies. State Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig supported Murray’s bill. And Murray papered the governor’s office with statistics about the district’s high dropout rates and its test scores, which were generally the lowest of any school system in the state in the last half of the 1980s.

The state did not administer the tests after the 1989-90 school year. And there is dispute over whether the district has since shown improvement. Compton school administrators maintain that more recent tests, given at the district level, demonstrate small but real gains.

They note that Compton educators face compelling challenges. Most students come from impoverished families. More than a third speak limited English. The district also has a high transiency rate. About 5,000 students moved either into or out of district schools last year alone, officials said.

Officials also insist that test scores should not be the only measure of progress. In the last two years, the district has increased its graduation requirements for math and science, adopted new curriculums to match revised state guidelines, installed computer labs in every elementary school and provided expanded teacher training, among other actions, they said.

District administrators, many employees and some parents lobbied hard against the Murray bill. They argued that it deprived voters of local control and unfairly singled out Compton Unified, a district whose student body is 98% minority, for special treatment.

“The Murray bill demonstrates that minority communities are not represented at the legislative table,” board President Steward said. “If the bill had come from a David Duke (a Ku Klux Klan member turned politician), we could have understood it, but it was passed by the people who are supposed to support us: black and Latino legislators.”

Murray, who is African-American, said his arguments for the bill were unfairly drowned out by lobbyists for the school district and employee unions.

“The only ones who don’t have an advocate are the children,” Murray said. “In a middle-class district, parents would be the advocates. In Compton, there is essentially no participation by parents, so I will appoint myself as advocate.”

Murray broke the news of Wilson’s veto to the school board Wednesday night just after the board approved the budget cuts.

The cuts became necessary when county analysts uncovered mistakes in two previously adopted Compton budgets. The main error was in the district’s balance for the fiscal year that ended June 30. The district thought it had $4.1 million in the bank. District auditors and county analysts have since reduced that estimate to about $670,000. Unspecified “miscalculations” caused the error, officials said.

The discrepancies prompted the Los Angeles County Office of Education to reject the school district budget twice. Compton Unified had until today to approve an acceptable budget or risk forfeiting control of financial decisions to the county or state.

Employees were particularly angry about the cuts because Supt. J. L. Handy pledged last month that the budget complications would necessitate no layoffs or significant program reductions. Handy could not be reached for comment.

The budget cuts muted district celebration over the veto.

“People are overwhelmed by the budget situation as well as the veto,” Steward said. “At the same time there is a sense of perspective, that we’ve got to do better. We cannot allow ourselves to return to this.”

Times staff writer Jill Gottesman contributed to this story.