Lawsuit Seeks School Repairs for Compton

Weary of sending their children to crumbling classrooms with broken windows and few books, a dozen Compton parents backed by the ACLU filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging that the state Department of Education has deprived the students of basic educational opportunities.

“If we measure the state of California’s commitment to children by anything, it is by the conditions of its schools,” said ACLU legal director Mark Rosenbaum. “California’s public officials have abandoned the poor families of Compton.”

The lawsuit seeks an order to compel the department to expedite repairs of the schools, some of which are more than 50 years old. State officials took over the 28,000-student school system in 1993 after it slid into a $20-million debt, and a state appointee in Compton now oversees district finances and academic programs.

Authored by the American Civil Liberties Union and a private law firm, the complaint contends that the state has violated its own education code, which requires every school district to maintain school facilities, property and student restrooms.

It also alleges that the state has violated the students’ rights to equal opportunities for education, in part by failing to provide textbooks, ink and other basic supplies.

The district has recently earmarked millions for school upkeep, but students at many of the district’s campuses attended classes this year in crumbling wood-frame buildings with boarded-up windows and spend recess periods on barren, dust-caked lots.

ACLU officials and parents at a Los Angeles news conference said the poor conditions in the schools have contributed to the district’s consistently high dropout rate and low test scores.

“No child should have to sit in a classroom that is filled with buckets” collecting water seeping from a leaky roof, said Roxanne Serna, 31, a plaintiff in the case with three children at Caldwell Elementary School.

“The victimization of students in Compton’s schools is tantamount to state-sponsored child abuse,” Rosenbaum said.

State officials didn’t question the legal basis for the lawsuit, but said the district has made significant progress toward repairing several campuses and that they hoped to reach a settlement.

“The real question is, what are we doing, how are we doing it, and does the court really need to take jurisdiction over this,” said Joe Symkowick, general counsel for the department. “They’re just saying, do it better and do it quicker. We believe the ACLU has the interests of kids at heart and we do too.”

However, for the first three years that state appointees controlled the district, they slashed the maintenance budget and withdrew applications for money to pay for renovation projects.

Vivien Hao, a district spokeswoman, said the district has spent about $1.2 million this year to repair 55 roofs out of a planned 182, and that it has submitted applications for $30 million to cover renovation projects.

Symkowick also said the district, with an annual budget of about $130 million, can afford only limited repairs. A February report by state officials estimated that the schools need at least $50 million in maintenance.

“We can only deal with the cards we’re dealt,” he said.

State officials have also said the $20 million loan they provided to the district before the takeover must be repaid before the local elected school board can be allowed to retake its authority over the district’s finances and academic programs.

Three members of the school board have already waged a courtroom battle for control of the district, arguing that state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin had abused her authority and violated Compton residents’ voting rights by stripping the elected board of its power.

A Superior Court judge ruled in February, however, that while the district’s lack of progress was “a matter of concern,” it did not mean that Eastin had run afoul of the law.

The ACLU lawsuit does not seek the return of authority to the local school board. Rosenbaum said that if the state does not agree to a settlement, he would seek to have a judge and a panel of independent experts develop a new plan for repairs.

“Nobody can look at these conditions and permit them to exist,” he said.

Randolph E. Ward, a former Long Beach school district administrator who has been the state’s appointee overseeing Compton since late 1996, said several of the problems cited in the lawsuit are scheduled to be fixed by the start of the school year this fall.

He said the district is proceeding “deliberately” on its roof repairs to ensure quality work and that two truckloads of new textbooks just arrived. Theft and vandalism have hampered maintenance work and textbook replacement for years and continue to be a threat.

“Everybody needs to be accountable,” Ward said. “When work is done shoddily, we don’t deal with those contractors. We get rid of folks that are stealing. We’re showing people that you’ve got to be accountable or you won’t be here.”

ACLU officials who had examined some of the schools’ undergoing maintenance said they considered the repairs “superficial.” One parent at the news conference said 300 parents had volunteered to help beautify a school campus recently, but that they only painted over walls already blistered with six layers of old paint, and even the fresh coat peeled off two months later.

That plaintiff, Claudia Soto, 24, said she fears for the welfare of her 6-year-old daughter, Christina, and that she is wary of sending her younger daughter to Compton schools next year.

When Christina first arrived at her elementary school, Soto said, she “asked me, ‘Why is my school so dirty?’ I didn’t know how to respond to her.”