Long-Delayed High School Clears Legalities, Awaits Funds : Education: It has taken years to get the land. It may take several more years to get the $50 million needed for construction.

Talk of building a new public high school in Lynwood is a bit like local folklore.

Altagracia Valdez heard that the project was just around the corner when her daughter was in grade school. That child graduated several years ago.

“We’re still waiting,” Valdez said. “Maybe when my 7-year-old gets there, we’ll have a new high school.”

Parents, students and educators all agree that the Lynwood Unified School District desperately needs a new high school, but construction of the proposed three-story facility has been delayed for years by a legal fight over the land.

The district finally prevailed in court last year, but the $95-million project remains in limbo until the state can fund construction costs.

The current Lynwood High School, built in 1940 for 1,500 students, enrolls more than 3,000. Trailers and portable classrooms house the overflow. A recent change to a year-round schedule also helps ease crowded conditions.

Still, school officials readily acknowledge that a generation of Lynwood High students has attended a campus that is too small and outdated.

“It is not equipped to properly educate high school students for the 21st Century,” Principal Mickey Cureton said. A newer, bigger building alone will not boost student achievement, he said, but “if you get an updated facility, it would be a very positive thing.”

The disparity between Lynwood High and schools in wealthier communities is not lost on Cureton, who has taught elsewhere.

Some high schools have TV monitors in the classroom, he recalled.

“The principal and student body leaders come on the screen to make announcements to the students,” Cureton said. “We don’t even have a public address system. We have to write up bulletins and hope that teachers read them to their classes.

“It’s a different ballgame.”

At Lynwood, students in only one honors math class have computers, Cureton said. The one chemistry lab on campus is antiquated. The foreign language department has no lab for students to listen to foreign language tapes or perform language drills on computers.

The portable classrooms are dark because windows have been painted to cover graffiti. Many classrooms have no air conditioning. The gymnasium is warmed only by portable propane heaters.

At lunch, students have no place to eat indoors. And the cramped serving facilities create long, slow-moving lines.

Many classes are crammed with students.

“My English honors class still has 40 students, and the teacher can’t get to all of us,” said senior Riley Westbrooks, who helped organize a walkout in September to protest overcrowding.

“We do our best,” is Cureton’s refrain.

Some students said the district should have done more.

They criticized the district’s decision to erect an administration building before a new high school. The new facility, completed in the summer of 1991, has also attracted the ire of parents as well as some community leaders and district employees.

“A lot of people call the administration building the Taj Mahal because it is so big, so fancy,” said Westbrooks, 17. “If they are not going to build us a new school, they could at least get us a cafeteria. We have to be outside all the time, even when it rains.”

Charles Oliver, a 16-year-old junior, said he recalls promises of a new high school when he was in seventh grade. “If they have enough money for a new administration building, they could at least start a new high school,” he said.

Business Manager Jerry Norman said the district does not have the funds for a new high school. The administration building and a new headquarters for maintenance and security staff cost $12 million, compared to the $95-million tab for the proposed high school.

Before the new office buildings were completed, the administration ran its operations from several outdated buildings, some of which were rented, officials said.

The district paid for the administration building by issuing bonds that will be paid back over 20 years. The cost to the district will be about $23 million over the life of the bonds, district Controller Thomas Connolly said.

Attempts to build a new high school predate the administration building, officials said.

The district has sought land for a new high school since at least the early 1980s. Officials ultimately concentrated their efforts on a 33-acre property on Imperial Highway--the site of a supermarket and Lynwood Academy, a school operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

In 1989, after a brief legal skirmish, the district bought the supermarket property, said Arnold Graham, the district’s attorney. But the church refused to sell.

The school district argued that the church site was the only available Lynwood property large enough for a high school. The school system also contended that as a public institution, it has the legal authority to acquire property in exchange for a fair purchase price, Graham said.

The church countered that taking the land violates the church’s constitutional rights.

In March, 1991, the district won the court battle for the land. Last June, a jury determined that $13.5 million was a fair price for the property. The church wanted more than twice that amount.

Hodge Dolle, lawyer for the Adventists, said the church will vacate the property by January, 1994, but plans to appeal to a higher court for a larger purchase price.

The state has already forwarded to Lynwood the money needed to buy the land and has pledged to reimburse Lynwood Unified for about $1 million in legal fees and architectural drawings, district officials said.

However, getting construction funds--an estimated $50 million--may be more difficult.

The state has an enormous backlog of requests to build or remodel schools. A shortage of class space exists statewide, and hundreds of schools need repairs.

State officials said the Lynwood High project would probably not be funded from last fall’s voter-approved $900-million bond measure for school construction. State funding is probably at least two years away, said Betty Hanson, a state consultant who helped Lynwood file funding applications.

Were it not for the lengthy legal battle, Lynwood could have qualified for state construction funds years ago when “there weren’t as many people in line,” Hanson said.

The district has also been hurt by new state rules giving higher funding priority to districts that raise at least half of their construction money.

“The entire funding mechanism has a disproportionate impact on poorer school districts,” Graham said.

Yolanda Zuniga, a mother of three, does not blame the district but is upset that her children must attend what she considers a substandard school.

“There is no excuse for us to be relegated to second-class citizens,” she said. “It’s unfair. My kids have talent. If they don’t have the resources, how can they ever do anything? It is sad. It kills the students’ motivation.”