School Funding Based on Staff Experience Takes Shape

By AMY PYLE

Dec. 26, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES EDUCATION WRITER

It was to be the Robin Hood of public funding agreements: taking from the richer schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District to give to poorer ones--a plan that pitted inner-city schools against their suburban counterparts.

But after four years of planning and negotiating, the Robin Hood mechanism, formally known as the Rodriguez Consent Decree, appears to be panning out a little differently.

Under a plan being reviewed by the school board for a final vote Jan. 13, schools that remain stubbornly below average in teaching and administrative staff experience--as measured by their salary costs--will receive extra money. Up to $6 million quickly will be pulled out of the district’s current budget to improve the classroom environment at 60 or more schools, a majority of them in the poorer quarters of the city.

Yet the campuses far over the average will not have to suffer--at least not yet--as the district searches for how to bring spending down in ways short of forcing transfers of senior teachers from the suburbs to the inner-city, or requiring principals to govern two schools.

“It’s very difficult to go into a school and say, ‘You’ve got to cut,’ ” said Assistant Supt. Gordon Wohlers. “We’re happy that we have the money this year to help [the low-spending] schools.”

Happy, too, are recipients such as Fremont High in South-Central Los Angeles, where a burgeoning student population--more than half in need of bilingual teachers--has left the campus with an abundance of new, younger hires. Those less expensive teachers leave the school more than $575,000 below its target as set by the Rodriguez agreement’s formula.

“When I have an opening, the reality is I have to fill it because I have the students here already. . . . I need to select from the available candidates,” said Principal Rosa Morley. “And . . . a brand new teacher is not necessarily bad; some of the ones I’ve picked up are excellent, but they’re still at the bottom of the salary scale.”

Fremont High’s subsidy, which will make up the full shortfall, is intended for use in the classroom. Top priorities would be teacher training and school supplies, Morley said.

Though all Los Angeles schools receive the same basic amount per student from the state, budgets in practice vary widely. One reason is supplemental funds based on the needs of students, such as bilingual education money. But another stems from the fact that teachers may choose where they want to work--assuming the school wants them--which leads to many suburban schools having more experienced, and expensive, teachers.

Subsidizing the schools that have newer teachers is merely “a baby step,” said Thomas Saenz--regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, one of the groups that took the district to court over school funding.

“There’s no substitute for an experienced teacher,” Saenz said.

While schools in South-Central and on the Eastside dominate the underspending ranks, a few suburban campuses will also benefit from the subsidies, including 12 in the San Fernando Valley and five in the South Bay. On the list are some that are surprising at first glance, such as Dixie Canyon Elementary in Sherman Oaks, which would receive nearly $17,000.

Principal Melanie Deutsch said about half of her teaching staff has retired in the past six years and replacements chosen by the interview committee were mostly young teachers. Deutsch knows the common perception is that a Valley school would have its pick of teachers, but she said the school’s bare bones budget--lacking the supplemental bilingual and poverty funds of inner-city schools--is a deterrent for many.

Though the subsidy is small, Deutsch said it would probably be used to hire a teacher’s aide or perhaps buy classroom computers. “We’ve got a wish list a thousand miles long,” she said.

The 1992 settlement came after a lawsuit was filed on behalf of a group of minority parents by numerous law firms, ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to San Fernando Valley Legal Services. Concerned that inner-city schools fared worse than others in many ways, among them having less experienced teachers, the plaintiffs originally sought absolute equity in the funding schools received per pupil.

Under the consent decree, however, that goal was modified to equalize merely per-pupil spending for staff--teachers, administrators and clerks. And the Los Angeles Unified School District campuses would have five years to achieve that standard at 90% of its schools, by July 1997. The agreement also specified that there would be no forced transfers of teachers, making attrition and growth the only opportunities for affecting the average staff costs.

Both sides acknowledge that the task has been more difficult than expected. Small elementary schools in particular have the double trouble of low turnover--because they are desirable places to work--and fewer obvious possibilities for cutting staff. While a larger school could get rid of one of two clerks, for instance, a smaller school would have only one.

In addition, one or two senior teachers on a smaller staff, making upward of $50,000 a year, can skew the school’s standing.

“If you only have a few teachers and they’re all over 50, you may be stuck up there . . . unless you’re forced to go without a principal,” said Day Higuchi, president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, the teachers union.

At the lower end, inner-city schools have found it hard to attract experienced educators, particularly because their need for bilingual teachers far exceeds the state’s supply. That leads them to hire bilingual teachers who lack teaching credentials and hover toward the bottom of the pay scale.

The decree allows schools some budgetary leeway: they can range up to $100 above or below the per-pupil averages, which are $1,524 for elementary schools, $1,742 for middle schools and $1,852 for high schools.

Even with that concession, an estimated 134 schools are spending above the average range, and 65 are spending below it, meaning that nearly a third of the district’s schools are out of compliance.

Part of the purpose of the $6-million subsidy is to help under-spending schools create an environment that will encourage younger teachers to stick around, thus enabling the schools to develop their own senior staff.

And in what officials concede is a budgetary “trick,” the subsidies also bring some higher-spending schools into compliance: by raising spending at the lower schools, the district average will increase--thus reducing the number of over-spending schools. This year’s average will be used for the first compliance review, expected to begin next fall.

Meanwhile, lawyers are debating other ways to make the legal agreement fit reality.

Exceptions are being considered for schools that keep their enrollment open all year for bused- in students, because they often get a midyear enrollment surge- and must plan ahead by hiring extra teachers in the fall. Some smaller schools are to be given a break, as are schools where a long- term illness necessitates a long- term substitute teacher, which counts as two teachers salaries in the school’s budget.

Higuchi, the president of the teachers union- which is not a formal party in the case-is bemused by the continuing modifications. “If you have enough exceptions,” he said, “there’s not going to be much difference between what they’ve got under Rodriquez and what the district originally had.”

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Where the Money Will Go

To help fulfill a legal agreement aimed at achieving funding equity in schools, the Los Angeles Unified School District is poised to offer subsidies to more than 60 schools now spending less than average on staff. The schools are expected to spend the extra money to improve the classroom--by hiring more teachers’ aides, for instance, or buying supplies. The plan, to be voted on by the school board next month, includes the distribution of nearly $5 million, here broken down by region and ranked from highest amount to lowest:

SOUTH-CENTRAL

25 schools: $2,437,305

Most: Fremont High

Least: Budlong Elementary

EASTSIDE

Eight schools: $935,765

Most: Nimitz Middle

Least: Lorena Elementary

SOUTHEAST

Seven schools: $357,823

Most: Stanford Elementary

Least: 122nd Street Elementary