Impoverished Old Schools Need Bigger Share of Prop. BB Funds

The filthy, smelly toilets and burned-out lights tell a story of failure, indifference and bad management in the Los Angeles school system.

So does graffiti on the walls and dirt-encrusted drinking fountains. “You want a drink of water, Bill?” a Jefferson High School student asked me sardonically.

“No, thanks,” I said.

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I visited Jefferson and another South L.A. high school, Fremont, in the last two weeks at the invitation of students who are fed up with the lousy conditions.

They wanted me to see what they had been telling me for months, that schools in the poorest parts of South L.A. are poorly maintained. They also contend that these schools are receiving less than their fair share of repair money from the $2.4-billion Proposition BB bond issue.

The students have organized protests under the sponsorship of the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment, which figures that bad schools make the fight against drugs and booze even more difficult.

Organizing hasn’t been easy. Several students were thrown off a campus in November when they were trying to recruit kids to demonstrate at the Board of Education.

My first stop was 83-year-old Jefferson High School, about 40 blocks southeast of downtown Los Angeles, in a neighborhood of poor African Americans and immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Two students met me at the front door and we began our tour.

Paint was peeling from the ceiling. Walls were stained with graffiti. As we walked over to the gym, I could smell the toilets even before I entered the building. It’s the third day they’ve been dirty, one of the students said. A young woman in our inspection party said the floor in the girl’s bathroom was covered with water.

Acoustic tiles have fallen off the walls inside some of the buildings and not been replaced. Bleachers burned in a Fourth of July fire were unrepaired. There was no grass on the football field, just rock-solid dirt. The running track was made of sand and dangerously pitted.

The scene at Fremont, a few miles southwest of Jefferson, was just as bleak.

The original buildings went up in 1924, with a new addition that has a post-World War II look about it.

Graffiti was part of the decor, just as it was at Jefferson. One of my guides pointed to the tiles that remained on a ceiling. “In third period, a tile fell on a boy’s head,” she said.

The auditorium was locked, but one of the students told me seats were missing and a wall still had not been repaired from a recent fire that inflicted severe damage.

In the covered luncheon area, most of the lights in the ceiling were out. In an upstairs classroom, water leaking from the roof had blistered the wall and the chalkboard. Instead of replacing the chalkboard, repair crews had merely covered it with green paint, which was peeling.

The teacher said she is forced to buy sheets of cardboard to replace the chalkboard’s out-of-commission surface.

More lights were out in the weight room. “For three years, I’ve been trying to get them to fix the lights,” a teacher told me.

The lighting situation was also bad in the girls’ gym, and the finish on the floor had worn away long ago.

“When we call for repairs,” another teacher told me, “it’s always someone else’s job. . . . I don’t understand why, if it’s a public school, all the schools can’t be the same.”

I talked to the principals of two schools. “Graffiti occurs all the time,” said Rosa Morley of Fremont. I wondered about the falling tiles. District maintenance considers them a low priority, she told me. “Tiles are considered more or less cosmetic.”

I asked Virginia Preciado of Jefferson about the atrocious bathroom at her school. She insisted it was cleaned daily. I suggested using some of the bond funds to install a new one, something of Dodger Stadium quality that can withstand heavy use. “We have a lot of other things in this school, roofing needs, air conditioning, bleachers, lockers, things that especially need to be replaced,” she said.

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In the long run, the impoverished old schools need a bigger share of Proposition BB repair funds, just as the students say. Steve Soboroff, chairman of the citizens committee overseeing the spending of BB money, agrees that “geographical equity is a big issue,” and he will meet with the students Jan. 31.

But much could be done immediately. Why not have frequent graffiti cleanup patrol? What about scrubbing the bathrooms three times a day? What about enlisting teams of parents and students to help?

And how many bureaucrats does it take to change a light bulb?