Vaughn Street School Rejects Funding Offer : Finances: The district raises its proposal. But the facility insists on the full $3,100 the state allocates per student.

Vaughn Street elementary school in Pacoima, the San Fernando Valley’s first charter school, Tuesday rejected a compromise offered by the Los Angeles Unified School District in a dispute over how much money the school will get to operate.

Under its new charter status, the school’s administrators acquired much more control over its curriculum and finances, but ran into a quarrel over how much of an allowance the district should provide.

The district increased its offer of $2,400 a year for each pupil, made last week, to $2,540, but school officials are still holding out for $3,100, which they said is the amount the state allocates to the district for each of its students. “How can they give us less money than they spend to operate the school?” asked Yvonne Chan, Vaughn principal.

At a meeting in the library attended by 35 administrators, teachers and parents--all of whom had a vote under the new charter system--the district proposal was unanimously rejected.

But district officials say their proposal is more than fair because no elementary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District receive the full $3,100 benefit.

Junior highs and high schools are given more per student than the lower grades. And funds are withheld for programs such as special education and child care.

This year the other elementary schools in the district will receive just $2,400 per student.

The additional money the district offered Vaughn Street would have been provided by releasing the school from having to pay into a fund that supports special education programs.

“We’re saying we believe we cannot allocate to Vaughn what we cannot give to our other schools,” said Henry Jones, budget director for the school district.

Chan counters that her school, which began its charter operations in July under the new name of the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center, should not be subsidizing programs that it will itself offer.

And she makes no bones about declaring that the Vaughn programs, separated from the district, will be better.

“Child care is separate funding from the state and if they (the district) don’t know how to manage it that’s too bad,” Chan said before the meeting. “Our child-care program is more expensive than theirs; are they going to pay for our program?”

The school group did accept one component of the district proposal that would require Vaughn to pay greater deductions than most elementary schools, per student, into the district’s integration program.

But on the other matters, it plans to fight on. Chan said the school will seek a clarification from the state Legislature that would determine whether charter schools in the district must participate in a court-ordered program that ensures even distribution of funds and resources across the district.

District officials have maintained that they must apportion funds equally to all their 419 elementary schools including Vaughn, regardless of its charter status. They say their stance on finances is not meant in any way to punish the school for going charter.

“We support the autonomy; it’s not an issue as far as we’re concerned because we want them to succeed,” Jones said.

The outcome of the negotiations between administrators at Vaughn and district officials is being closely monitored by administrators at Fenton Avenue School in Lake View Terrace, which also claimed independence from the school district in late April. Altogether, about two dozen schools, most of them in Northern California, have been granted charter status.