Panel Urges 2nd Chance for Schools to Obtain Repairs

The citizen oversight committee for more than $1 billion in school repairs voted informally Saturday to keep the door open for schools to get larger allocations if they can show they were shortchanged by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

If endorsed by school district officials, the action could open the door for requests from hundreds of schools to add projects to their lists of repairs that are to be paid from Proposition BB bond funds.

The 6-0 vote, which is advisory only, capped a sometimes tense meeting of the Proposition BB bond oversight committee, held in the offices of a South-Central community organization that has protested what its members believe is inequity in the projected distribution of bond funds.

After viewing photographs of dilapidated bathrooms and disintegrating acoustic ceilings in some schools, committee Chairman Steven Soboroff pledged to members of South Central Youth Empowered thru Action that he would do his utmost to ensure that BB funds eradicate such conditions, even if that means dipping into bond funds set aside for school construction.

But Soboroff and other committee members also encountered vocal displeasure when they suggested to the crowd of about 150 that students and parents must bear more responsibility for the condition of schools.

Organizers of the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention & Treatment, which sponsors the youth group, reined in the flashes of conflict by alternately counseling committee members and the audience.

The unusual meeting resulted from an invitation delivered to Soboroff late last year by the African American and Latino youth group representing students from four high schools in South-Central. Displaying a chart showing that millions more in BB repair dollars are going to some San Fernando Valley and Westside schools than to their older and more crowded campuses, the students demanded to know how the BB contracts were formed, how inequities could be corrected and how students and parents could gain a say in the BB process.

Soboroff sidestepped the first question by pointing out that the contracts were drawn up from maintenance requests before the committee was created as part of the $2.4-billion bond approved in April for school repairs and new construction.

Committee member Kenneth Ballard, a representative of the PTA, cautioned that big-ticket repairs such as deteriorating boilers can cause disparities from one school to the next in how much money they need.

Several committee members told the group they were on the right track--direct political action--to have their say.

Comparing the schools to a car that has broken down for lack of routine maintenance, David Barulich, who represents the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., admonished the audience that the only way to have shipshape schools is to keep the pressure on the Board of Education year after year following the BB repairs so that it does not fall back into its habit of neglect.

Soboroff caused flurries of rebuke by challenging the students and parents to do more. He pressed the students to provide lists of substandard conditions that are not scheduled for repair, and promised that he would join them personally if they and their parents begin weekend cleanups.

Moderator Marqueece Dawson, who heads the youth program, told Soboroff the students’ commitment was made evident by their presence, and later admonished the committee chairman that he had hit a “hot button” in asking the audience, “Which ones of you have seen someone write graffiti or break a bathroom stall?”

When pressed by coalition director Karen Bass, the committee voted to recommend reopening the contract of any school where deficiencies are documented.

The vote does not commit the school district to do so, nor does it satisfy another demand by Bass that professional inspectors be sent to itemize each school’s needs.