Education Budget Deal Attacked

For a time, lawmakers working on California’s new budget appeared to have settled one of the most touchy issues to emerge this year: funding for desegregation of big city schools, particularly in Los Angeles.

But a deal, struck by the Senate-Assembly budget conference committee at 1 a.m. Tuesday, ran into major trouble 12 hours later, as Los Angeles Democrats charged that wealthy districts would gain at the expense of L.A. schools--and at the expense of some schools in the districts of GOP lawmakers who pushed for the compromise.

“This is horrible,” state Sen. Richard G. Polanco (D-Los Angeles) said. “It’s aimed at L.A. Unified. How can you justify taking money from poor districts and giving it to Beverly Hills?”

School funding remained a major unresolved issue as lawmakers and Gov. Pete Wilson continued to talk in an effort to reach an accord on California’s $63-billion budget.

Wilson and the Legislature failed to approve the 1996-97 spending plan by the new fiscal year, which began Monday, missing the constitutional deadline for the ninth time in the last 10 years.

California’s public schools will be relatively flush next year, receiving $28 billion. But how that money gets distributed is the stuff of raging debate in Sacramento.

One contentious issue is how to distribute money for school desegregation and other programs such as education of gifted children, all of which comes out of a special $2-billion pot of education money.

Like everything else in education funding, it’s complex.

In trying to resolve the school issues, lawmakers on the budget conference committee struck a deal ensuring that urban schools would receive $500 million to continue to comply with past court-ordered desegregation plans.

That’s the amount Wilson proposed that they receive for desegregation.

Of that sum, the Los Angeles Unified School District is to get $250 million.

However, earlier in budget negotiations, Assembly Republicans, bucking their own governor, proposed slashing the desegregation fund by half, spreading the money among the state’s other schools. Under that plan, Los Angeles would lose $117 million.

Republicans have retreated from that proposal. But in exchange, they have pushed to reallocate a separate $106 million, earmarked for programs such as education of gifted children and transportation of students.

Early Tuesday, the conference committee approved the plan. But by midday, lobbyists for public school groups, including L.A. Unified, were hard at work trying to change it.

With the help of a Department of Education computer, they were passing out a 16-page spreadsheet showing how each school district in each Assembly district would fare.

The result: While Los Angeles would retain its $250 million in desegregation money, it would lose $28 million for the other programs paid for by the separate $106 million.

No other school district would lose anywhere near that sum. But several would gain. The Beverly Hills school district, for one, would gain $380,000. The Santa Monica-Malibu district would gain $458,000. San Marino schools would gain $188,000.

Other Los Angeles County districts that would lose, according to the Department of Education numbers, include Pasadena, which would come out $524,000 short, and Long Beach, which would lose $776,000.

“It’s like a drive-by,” said John Mockler, a lobbyist for Los Angeles Unified. “They tried to hit L.A., and they got it, but they sprayed a lot of bystanders.”

Assemblyman Charles S. Poochigian (R-Fresno), who helped negotiate the deal, challenged the Department of Education figures and accused opponents of the deal of attempting to deliver “pork” for districts and “rip off everyone else.”

“Our goal is to reform the system so it can be a fairer distribution,” he said. “Their goal is lock in the inequities of the current system.”

According to the Department of Education, Poochigian’s district includes winners, such as the Fresno and Clovis school districts, each of which would gain about $1.2 million, and a few relatively minor losers.

In general, districts in Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties would win under the new formula. Since those counties tend to vote Republican, Southern California Democrats charged that the formula is weighted to benefit GOP lawmakers’ constituents.

However, several Republican legislators also represent schools that would lose, including several small school districts in Republican Assemblyman Bernie Richter’s Chico-area district. Richter is the lawmaker who first proposed the original redistribution.

By day’s end, the fight about school spending was boiling over. Wilson convened a news conference to blast Democrats for refusing to agree to his plan to spend $678 million to cut class sizes in first, second and third grades.

The event turned testy when Bill Lockyer, Democratic leader of the Senate, showed up uninvited. Democratic lawmakers and school lobbyists insist that, while they favor class size reduction, public schools cannot meet Wilson’s goal as quickly as he wants.

“I’m not willing to take the pressure off the schools,” Wilson said. “We’ve just got back fourth-grade scores that rank California dead last. Educators ought to be pushed to find a way.”

As the news conference ended, Lockyer and Wilson agreed to meet Tuesday night to continue budget talks.