Enough of L.A. Unified’s Big Foot in Construction Funds

California’s students are being held hostage by a lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Los Angeles Unified School District, that seeks to halt badly needed school-construction projects. While the suit commendably aims to help poor students in crowded L.A. schools, its success would harm needy children in the state’s other school districts.

In 1998, the state adopted rules that require school districts to secure new school sites, demonstrate a need for new schools and be prepared to start construction. That same year, voters passed a $9.2-billion school-construction bond, Proposition 1A. All the state’s districts have complied with the rules and stood in line in hopes of getting matching state funds, amounting to 50%, promised by Proposition 1A. Many districts have worked hard to pass local school bonds to qualify for the state money.

L.A. Unified has already been approved for $430 million in Proposition 1A money for school-renovation and new-construction projects. But now, unable or unwilling to play by the rules, LAUSD wants a “special allocation” of new-construction funds.

The suit’s proponents contend that the current funding system is unfair, because L.A. Unified has a more pressing need to build schools than do other districts. We are the largest, L.A. says. We are the neediest and the most diverse. We have a right to the money.

In Elk Grove, my district, the majority of students are Latino, African American and Asian. It is one of the fastest-growing in the nation, expected to grow from 45,000 students today to 80,000 in 10 years. The schools serve thousands of low-income families. Elk Grove has worked hard to build community support for year-round education, saving hundreds of millions of dollars in new-construction costs. Overall, 65% of Elk Grove students are on year-round. Many other school districts are in similar straits. Are these children any less needy or less worthy than those in L.A. Unified?

LAUSD, moreover, has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on Belmont, South Gate and other new-school sites. Its attempts to identify new sites have produced blunder after blunder, including proposals to tear down a local hospital and to displace an existing school without testing community reaction. The district claims that land for school construction is hard to find in urban areas, but L.A. Unified didn’t become an urban district overnight.

Yet, despite this checkered past, and without demonstrating a renewed capacity to site and build schools, the suit contends that LAUSD should be automatically granted hundreds of millions of state-construction dollars. If L.A. gets its way, voters may lose faith in the system and reject future school-related bonds, which cover about half of school-construction costs, at a time when California’s enrollment is projected to grow by 270,000 in three years.

Fair is fair. LAUSD does not--and should not--qualify for any additional Proposition 1A school-construction funds until it applies for them according to the rules. To allow it to do otherwise risks breaking faith with parents, community members and voters, let alone alienating the state’s school districts.

There is a better way. Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature should take advantage of the state’s booming economy and use a portion of the budget surplus to craft an urban school-construction fund. The rules governing this fund could be tailored to highly urban districts like L.A.’s but include strong accountability measures that stress meeting deadlines, spending money wisely and, above all, finding “outside the box” solutions to housing students.

One of our board’s top priorities is building character and civic values. We’ve worked for years to teach our students: 1) to be fair and play by the rules; 2) to give back to the community through service, because giving back is the “rent” you pay for living in your community; and 3) to participate in the democratic process, because participation will pay off in a government that is fair and that takes the needs of everyone into account. Los Angeles students deserve top-quality schools, but robbing funds from other districts to help out LAUSD sends the wrong message to our children.