Book Shortage Plagues L.A. Unified

Sophomore Angeles Herrera hurries down the halls of Fremont High School with a single slim notebook tucked under her arm.

She carries no textbooks because she has none.

Textbooks remain the essential guide to education, second in importance only to competent teachers. But book shortages have become so common in big-city high schools that Angeles doesn’t know she should expect more--that, in fact, state law guarantees her a text for every class.

Ask when she last had a textbook of her own and Angeles looks puzzled. Was it French last semester? Yes, she thinks so. And maybe algebra last year.

In the absence of take-home books, she spends chunks of valuable classroom time reading and copying from a class set of 30 books shared by up to 150 students daily. Sometimes there are not even enough of those to go around.

Angeles senses the void most acutely when she digs into her homework at night. “You don’t have the book for examples,” she said. When she gets confused, she telephones a classmate and they try to muddle through together.

Her plight is education’s tragic secret, one that threatens to undermine a generation’s literacy: Across the nation, students routinely make do without textbooks in one or more classes. Those in urban areas fare worse than their suburban cousins. California’s public school students are among the worst off, thanks to lower education funding, radically shifting education philosophies and a faster-growing, more transient public school population.

The problem remains hidden because it is rarely quantified. The 663-campus Los Angeles Unified School District can’t take stock because it eliminated its centralized book purchasing department in 1990 to save money.

One of the few surveys on the subject, conducted last year by the Assn. of American Publishers in conjunction with the National Education Assn., found that 54% of California teachers did not have enough books to send home with their students, compared to 39% nationwide. A quarter of the California teachers said their students did not even have books to use in class.

“We have kids in school, but they don’t have the tools of their trade with them,” said Margaret Gaston, senior fellow with the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning in Santa Cruz. “It’s like giving a telephone repairman a truck with no equipment. . . . The pressure is on for teachers to bring larger numbers of students with complicated language and economic issues to higher levels of achievement than ever before in our nation’s history, and we don’t give them books? It’s wacky.”

Although a single textbook can cost $45 or more, a Times analysis of Los Angeles Unified data indicates that the district spends just $26 a student on textbooks each year--far below even the meager statewide average of nearly $33.

The depth of the problem caught the district’s new superintendent, Ruben Zacarias, off guard.

“How could that be?” he said incredulously. “When it’s all said and done, what’s more important than a book for every child?”

As a reporter apprised him of the extent of the shortage during an interview in his downtown office, Zacarias scribbled notes on a yellow pad and pledged that the issue would become one of his major initiatives. He promised to find ways to urge individual schools to make books a higher priority for the funds they control, to increase earmarked textbook funding districtwide and to lobby for changes in government regulations that could free up federal money for textbooks.

The superintendent’s surprise illustrates that the textbook shortage remains largely unknown--especially to busy parents who took textbooks for granted in their school days.

“A lot of people in my generation still think everybody has a book,” said Fremont High Principal Rosa Morley. “They want to know, ‘Why aren’t the students learning? Why are the teachers complaining so much?’ They just don’t have a clue what it’s really like.”

Angeles Herrera’s teacher, Aurora Martinez, knows precisely what it’s like. Last year, she had nary a book when she started teaching Fremont’s “Spanish for Spanish Speakers”--a course increasingly popular among the South-Central Los Angeles campus’ immigrant students.

Instead, she relied on copies of literature and grammar drills scavenged at conferences, a solution she is pretty sure violates copyright laws.

After routinely lacking adequate materials during her eight years in two school districts, Martinez has sheepishly modified time-honored teaching techniques: Faced with just 28 books for three classes this year, she has students read in class, aloud and silently, rather than guiding them through discussion groups. She assigns little homework even though she would like to assign more, and she wonders about the inequities for children who have precious few books at home.

“If schools get the same amount of money, why does this school look so empty?” she asked, gazing at empty metal book racks filling two corners of her room.

The search for an answer leads through a tangle of factors. Consider, for starters:

* Inflation: Textbook prices have risen faster than state funding. California’s ranking toward the bottom in education spending leaves it scraping the barrel in book spending as well--47th among all states last year.

* Bureaucratic priorities: Although some states spend nearly 2 cents of every education dollar on textbooks, California districts, on average, spend about three-quarters of a cent and Los Angeles Unified’s expenditure is less than half a cent.

* Disappearing books: At schools with high student turnover such as Fremont, where a third of the 4,000 who enroll in the fall are gone by the spring, books walk off campus faster than they can be replaced. Currently, the school textbook clerk’s files list more than 6,000 missing books issued to current or former students.

* Changing demands: Every time educators adopt a new teaching method, a line of corresponding texts appears, creating the desire to replace an entire subject area of texts virtually overnight. The state’s recent philosophical shift from traditional algebra and geometry classes to a continuum of integrated math classes cost districts $68 per student for books and other supplies. Most schools switch over gradually, which leaves them with incomplete sets to teach both old and new philosophies.

* Individual choices: Districts and principals must make tough spending decisions between books and teacher training, books and tutors, books and computers. And technology is an increasingly tough contender in that competition: Last year, Los Angeles Unified spent about $33 million on educational technology, according to a county survey, and $21 million on textbooks.

“We’ve been missing the obvious here,” said Los Angeles school board member Jeff Horton, who recently launched a drive to bring more books into schools and who notes that dozens of textbooks can be purchased for the cost of a few computers. “We can’t get higher reading scores without books. We’re a bunch of adults who didn’t grow up with computers who are dazzled by them.”

Problem Affects Whole District

Wrenching competition for funds may be greater in poorer inner-city schools, but location is not the sole determining factor in textbook shortfalls. Plaintive cries about insufficient books ring out from all corners of the Los Angeles district, from Eagle Rock to Sylmar, Venice to North Hollywood.

Although all district schools have roughly the same amount of money available for textbooks, a review of school-by-school budgets from 1993 to 1996 points up broad differences in average textbook spending, from a low of $13 per student at San Fernando High to a high of $66 at North Hollywood High’s magnet for the highly gifted. Expenditures tell only part of the story, because a school in a poorer area that spends more on books still may lose more, and thus have a smaller supply.

Sometimes, the residue of uneven spending can be found within a single school, particularly if there is a magnet program on campus. Over the last three years, Sylmar High averaged $19 per student on books, and its small math and science magnet supplemented that spending with an additional $10 per student.

The result is visible in the hallways, where magnet school students are the only ones carrying backpacks bulky with books.

So ingrained was the lack of books in one Sylmar biology magnet class that when teacher Bill Tarr announced that he had finally scrounged up texts for each student to take home, they groaned about having to tote the extra weight.

Tarr, who also teaches regular science classes with no take-home books, sees the contrast every day.

In the class with books, he can issue pop quizzes on what has been read the night before, then jump into the middle of a lecture or experiment, knowing that the students will not be disoriented. In the class without books, lessons get drawn out over several days because valuable teaching time is needed for reading from the classroom set.

“You get used to having nothing, of course,” Tarr said. “It becomes a management thing: Five minutes at the start of class to pick up books, five minutes at the end to put them back, quiet time to read in class. It’s really a waste of time.”

High Schools Are Worst Off

Generally, elementary schools are better off because their texts are cheaper. The state also added $80 per student for new reading texts this spring, on top of materials money included in the elementary school class-size reduction push.

Middle schools experience feast or famine depending largely on whether they received or shipped out textbooks when they lost ninth grade and took on sixth grade after leaving the world of junior highs.

The largest gap between demand and supply occurs at the high school level, where textbooks are the most expensive and the need to consult a book at home for research and review is greatest.

Widening that chasm are spending practices in Los Angeles Unified, which last year set aside $75 per high school student for instructional materials--everything from texts to software to lab supplies--but spent only $22 of that money on textbooks.

The impact of the district’s low textbook spending is painfully obvious:

* It forces teachers to make the choice between up-to-date books and enough books.

In the 1971-vintage history books that Huntington Park High teacher Raul Chagoyan was using last year, Richard Nixon was president and there was no hint that the Cold War could ever end. “I was 1 year old when that book was published,” he said.

Recently, Chagoyan secured 1985-vintage books, enough for all his students, but they are still old and many are ratty, with text obscured by graffiti and whole chapters ripped out.

* It forces students to cut corners where they shouldn’t have to, and sometimes causes them to fork out their own money--a violation of the state Constitution’s guarantee of free books in public schools.

Recent graduate Dan Hemmati, 17, discovered that there were shortages even at North Hollywood High School’s magnet for highly gifted students.

When he enrolled in an advanced-placement American history class as a sophomore, the teacher informed students that there were no books but that they could buy their own for $65. About a quarter of the students could not afford the books, Hemmati estimated, putting them at considerable disadvantage and slowing down the pace of the class for everyone.

“The night before the exam, several would call me and say, ‘Quick, Danny! I’m screwed. I need you to summarize it,’ ” he said. “These were people I saw every day. I couldn’t say no. So I’d spend 45 minutes to an hour, when I should have been studying myself, helping them out.”

* It forces parents to improvise at home and be vigilant at school, and is a further handicap to children whose parents are absent or less tuned in to their academic needs.

Melodie Dove thought her son was just being lazy when the freshman came home from Fremont High without a single text. She figured he’d left his books in his locker. Then she attended a parent advisory meeting and discovered that the textbook shortage topped the agenda.

“I was literally shocked,” said Dove, who attended Locke High, where she recalls no shortage of books.

“There’d be assignments that required books, but no book.” she said of Fremont. “They were supposed to find some time either before or after school or between classes to use the class sets to get notes from the book. . . . Of course, that’s just impossible . . . particularly in technical, really difficult subjects, like physics and chemistry.”

Dove began nagging teachers and administrators, working diligently to make sure her son--who graduated last year--and then her daughter were issued books.

To those who would criticize her victory as shallow because other students continue to do without, Dove responds that when she goes to the grocery store, “I don’t buy for everybody else.”

But the majority of parents are not as insistent as Dove. A recent Los Angeles Times poll indicated that two-thirds of Los Angeles public school parents were confident that their children had adequate textbooks for all classes, even though the reality clearly is far bleaker.

The state sets aside only $17 per student for teaching materials. Nevertheless, state education officials and textbook company lobbyists blame school administrators for being unwilling to make books a top priority for other funds they control.

“We’ve allocated huge amounts of other monies, like lottery, for instructional materials over the last three years,” said John Mockler, a Sacramento lobbyist retained by both textbook publishers and Los Angeles Unified. “There’s no reason they shouldn’t have a book for every kid.”

Principals say that criticism fails to recognize the many demands for supplies, as basic as paper and as essential as administrative computers, that must come out of that same money. And, while in theory setting priorities is the principal’s job in an increasingly decentralized system, in reality much of a school’s money arrives identified for specific purposes.

Federal money intended for poorer schools cannot be used to buy textbooks, and labor costs eat up 87% of an average school’s budget.

Little Leeway in Spending

Fremont Principal Morley shakes her head as she flips through the binder that holds the portion of Fremont’s annual budget that she and her school community control: less than $3 million out of $17 million. In that pot, there is abundant money for anti-poverty and bilingual programs--none of which can be spent on textbooks--there is tutoring money and counseling money and money for added security.

“If the school is not secure, it doesn’t matter how many textbooks I have, the parents will not be happy,” she moaned. Then, slapping the notebook shut in disgust, she added, “As you can see, there’s not a lot of money where we could say, ‘Let’s buy everybody a book.’ It’s pathetic.”

Morley knows Fremont is unusual in two ways. First, it has higher-than-average student turnover, ranking 40th among 49 high schools in the district, which has accelerated textbook loss to up to 50% of supplies annually.

Second, under Morley, Fremont is waging war against textbook shortages. In her three years as principal, she has mended fissures in the school’s text distribution and tracking system to limit loss, which included making the teachers responsible for the books: Those with the highest loss rates must go to the end of the book checkout line the following semester, giving them last choice from a dwindling supply.

She also plans to spend $60 per student on books this year, up from just $17 last year. The money comes from a legal settlement under which the district is compensating schools that cannot attract more experienced teachers.

But Morley knows that in many ways she is treading water under a waterfall.

One of her teachers, Louis Rosales, went off on his winter break, then found upon his return that the algebra books he had been using had been snapped up by another teacher. So, midyear, Rosales began with a different algebra text.

He met the switch with resignation.

“It wasn’t a problem, really,” he said. “The majority of the kids don’t use the textbook. They either take it home and leave it there or leave it in their locker.”

School board member David Tokofsky--a former teacher perplexed by that growing sense of resignation--has started his own textbook campaign by trying to better enforce punishment for loss. District policy allows schools to prevent students from marching across the stage on graduation day if they have not paid for lost books, but neither transcripts nor actual graduation can be blocked. A district staff memo responding to Tokofsky’s concerns encourages schools to pursue the fines, but also suggests that they offer poorer families alternatives such as working off the fees.

Tokofsky admits he isn’t sure what has gone wrong.

“I don’t know what crept in first,” he said. “Was it that 10 years of shortage led teachers to develop another strategy, or is it from the kids going through grades four through nine and not expecting anything?”

Proposition 13 Started Decline

Clearly, the 2-decade-old Proposition 13, which ravaged property tax revenues, and California’s recession of the early ‘90s were major contributors to the erosion of textbook supplies. But some experts see deeper root causes.

Professor G. Alfred Hess believes the seeds were planted in the 1960s, when two major forces changed American public education: Teachers unions gained significant power and white flight from cities boosted enrollment and achievement in suburban districts, making them for the first time the preferred places to work. Consequently, urban districts felt pressure to pay teachers more to keep them from leaving,” said Hess, who teaches education and social policy at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

Union leaders consider such arguments simplistic. “Unless you give people an incentive . . . to work in an urban district, they’re not going to,” said Day Higuchi, president of United Teachers-Los Angeles. “Books don’t teach themselves.”

Other States Take Action

In Florida last year, Gov. Lawton Chiles learned the textbook secret from staff members who had children in public schools. Then he started hearing about it whenever he made a political stop at a school. His outrage worked its way into his speeches, which embarrassed the state Legislature into increasing the textbook budget by more than a third.

“It does resonate with people,” Chiles said. “When you say we live in an age in which we’ve got everything, computers in classrooms, and yet we’ve got books 15 years out of date and kids that can’t take a book home, people would say, ‘Why is it happening?’ ”

In New York, Gov. George Pataki has proposed doubling the state textbook allocation over the next four years.

In California, Gov. Pete Wilson’s education advisor said his administration views textbook shortages as each district’s problem. “Districts are getting a tremendous amount of discretionary revenue this year,” said Marian Bergeson. “It’s incumbent on local school boards to make sure classrooms are equipped with what they need.”

Books tend to attract neophyte politicians. Assembly Speaker Cruz Bustamante (D-Fresno) crafted a law during his first year in office requiring districts to hold hearings whenever the state increased teaching materials funding and explain to the public the status of textbook supplies.

That first year, the state gave Los Angeles Unified a little more than $1 million extra. Senior administrators decided to spend it on math and science materials, not books. No shortage hearings were held by the district.

Of late, first-term Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Sylmar) is trying to redirect $20 million more to textbooks--about $3.70 a student--by reducing lottery administrative costs. He became interested in books two decades ago, he said, as a student at San Fernando High School. There, he was handed tattered books that sometimes even had the name of his oldest brother written in them--a brother who had graduated 15 years earlier.

Teachers Used to Making Do

Until things change, teachers such as Fremont’s Blaine Steele will rely on welcome aberrations.

English teacher Steele never had enough books through seven years of substitute teaching, followed by five at Fremont, making do with a hodgepodge of novels and lessons he pulled off the Internet from his home computer.

Imagine his sense of elation last fall when he entered the textbook room and found stacks of “Elements of Literature,” enough for all of his students.

Imagine his sense of confusion after he dragged the books back to class only to realize he had no idea how to use textbooks.

“I didn’t know how to integrate them into the classroom; if they’re going to read outside, how did I check it?” he said. “It was like winning the lottery and not knowing what to do with the money.”

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In a Book Bind

Textbooks shortages are common across the nation--worse in urban areas than suburban, and worst in low-spending states like California, which ranks 47th in the nation for textbook spending.

“Books are weapons in the war of ideas.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt. From a poster on the wall of L.A. school Supt. Ruben Zacarias’ office.

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BY THE NUMBERS

* 76% of California teachers believe every student should have a textbook to take home, according to a recent survey by the Assn. of American Publishers.

* 54% reported that they did not even have enough books to do so.

* 24% said their students didn’t even have books in class.

* 40% say they waste valuable class time reading aloud or writing on the chalkboard because there aren’t enough books to go around.

* In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the 54 high schools and major magnet programs averaged $22 per student, which was far below the statewide average of $33 and the national average of $42.

* $25 million was spent on textbooks in the Los Angeles Unified School District this year, up from $21 million last year, partly because of additional state instructional materials money to support reducing class size in grades one and two.

Sources: Assn. of American Publishers, U.S. Department of Education, Los Angeles Unified School District

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Book Budget

Textbook spending at L.A. Unified high school and high school magnet programs varies widely and is not determined by location. The district average is $22 per student.

Source: L.A. Unified School District, 1993-1996