L.A. School District Faces Payback for Bold Gamble

Like California’s 1,000 other school districts, the Los Angeles Unified School District is in the midst of trying to cut class size in its lower elementary grades to 20 students. But even if enough teachers are hired, the question of where to put all the students is overwhelming. To meet the Feb. 16 target date for the first phase of class-size reduction, the district must find 1,000 additional classrooms. Already, it is taking delivery of four portable classrooms a day in order to catch up.

Now, district leaders are hoping that local voters will support a $2.4-billion school-house bond issue on the November ballot. Prospects for passage, however, aren’t good. Under Proposition 13, local school bonds require a two-thirds vote to pass if they increase local prop- erty-tax rates, and most of the voters in the district don’t have kids in school. So it seems likely that Los Angeles, along with many other school districts in the state, will be back in Sacramento next year looking for money, especially since the second year of the class-size-reduction program will create a much bigger space squeeze for most schools.

But getting more money out of Sacramento means that LAUSD must wade back into a political quagmire that swallowed any hope of a state school bond on this year’s ballot, partly because the district partnered with home builders who want to reform the school-construction finance system. This complicated tale of political intrigue is but one small example of what has happened in California’s education community since Gov. Pete Wilson decided last summer to use a budget surplus to pay for smaller classes. Not only has his decision been good for schoolchildren, but it has also pinned the education community to the wall, politically.

Teachers and administrators cannot seriously complain about what Wilson has done for them, since they have been demanding for years that he reduce class size. All they can do is try to implement it. In the arena of school facilities, this has strained traditional political alliances almost to the breaking point.

The class-size-reduction program has put more pressure on school districts and the state to try to resolve their seemingly endless dispute over how to pay for new schools. Longstanding policy holds that the state should pick up part of the bill through statewide bond issues, the locals should pay a part by issuing their own bonds, and developers should help finance schools in areas where their projects create new demand for education.

Over the past decade, however, the school population has grown rapidly; neither the state nor local districts have been able to raise enough bond money, and school districts have been in constant litigation over just how much developers should pony up.

The situation brightened somewhat last spring, when more than 60% of the state’s voters approved a $3-billion bond issue for new-school construction. But just when school districts were looking forward to another statewide bond on November’s ballot, the state’s home builders launched an aggressive campaign to cut back districts’ ability to impose high fees on new development projects. Soon the builders and their legislative allies were holding a November school bond hostage.

When Wilson entered the fray with his class-size-reduction proposal, all sides grew more desperate. The school districts saw higher costs coming, and the builders saw higher fees coming. So the builders trolled the state for school districts willing to break ranks and support the idea of cutting back on allowable developer fees. It wasn’t long before Los Angeles bit and agreed to support the cutback in developer fees in exchange for a guaranteed 15% of state school-bond proceeds.

It’s not hard to understand why LAUSD joined with the builders. Like many urban districts in California, Los Angeles is forced to contend with a growing school population (due to high birth rates, mostly in immigrant neighborhoods) even though the district is not home to many new development projects. A few hundred million in bond money is worth far more than all the fees in the world. More important, however, is the fact that there’s a palpable lack of trust between LAUSD and the rest of the state’s school establishment, especially on the issue of school facilities. Los Angeles believes it doesn’t get its fair share of bond proceeds from the State Allocation Board, which distributes the state’s bond money. Other districts, even urban districts with similar demographics to L.A.’s, believe Los Angeles is arrogant to demand special treatment.

From LAUSD’s point of view, the deal with the builders was a simple matter of protecting one’s backside. If the State Allocation Board won’t treat Los Angeles right, the reasoning goes, then we’ll get our money guaranteed upfront from California voters. Given the history of animosity, however, it’s not too surprising that LAUSD is now more or less estranged from the rest of the school districts for what they view as Los Angeles’ “deal with the devil.”

Unfortunately for the district, the deal with the devil left it with nothing. The whole agreement blew up at the end of the legislative session over Labor Day weekend, and there’s no statewide school bond on the November ballot. (Among other things, even some urban L.A. lawmakers, such as Assembly Minority Leader Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) wouldn’t go for the builders’ proposal.) And if the LAUSD’s own bond goes down in November, then it will have little choice but to go back, hat in hand, to Sacramento, where memories are long.

Wilson, meanwhile, knows full well that his class-size-reduction program is so popular that nobody in the education community would dare oppose it, and right now he’s milking that advantage all he can. Last week, he leaned on the State Allocation Board to redirect $95 million in state bond funds from pre-existing priorities to buy portable classrooms to facilitate his program, even though smaller classes weren’t on anyone’s mind when the bond issue passed last spring.

Some school lobbyists squawked, but the board had little choice but to go along with the idea. Like other districts, LAUSD is learning that sometimes your worst nightmare--politically, at least--is to get what you say you want.