Judge Seeks Proposal in School Funding Suit

A judge indicated Tuesday that he may be willing to order changes in the way state school construction funds are handed out so that Los Angeles and other urban areas would be able to compete against more nimble suburban districts.

Los Angeles Superior Court David P. Yaffe rejected a request to immediately halt the distribution of funds remaining from the 1998 statewide school construction bond.

But he instructed lawyers for a group of Los Angeles schoolchildren and their parents to tell him how they would make the system work more fairly without stopping the flow of money to the rest of the state.

“I want a fixed set of rules that will get the bond money distributed in a fixed amount of time,” Yaffe said. “I want it in a form that if I do order it, all takers will be bound by it.”

He gave the lawyers 10 days to come up with the proposal and scheduled a new hearing for July 20.

The case was brought by a coalition of civil rights attorneys in March after it became clear that the giant Los Angeles Unified School District would capture only a pittance of the $6.7-billion bond. Los Angeles school officials have said they will be unable to prepare applications by the June 30 deadline. In the meantime, school districts around the state have submitted applications that far exceed the capacity of the fund.

The lawsuit contends that application rules discriminate against poor and minority students living in urban areas. The state requires districts to obtain land and approval of the state architect before applying. Urban districts face many more obstacles to acquiring land, including the necessity of using eminent domain, moving residents and dealing with pollution.

Yaffe initially issued a tentative order saying that it would be “grossly unfair to limit the construction of new schools throughout the state to the pace at which the [Los Angeles district] can arrange for the construction of new schools.”

But he then allowed attorneys for the Los Angeles students about an hour for arguments.

Molly Munger of the firm English, Munger & Rice argued passionately that the “first-come, first-served” system was allowing money to “swoosh” out the door to wealthy districts while the children of Los Angeles “sink like a rock.”

She said some suburban districts, which already have classrooms for all their students, base their applications on “fantasy students” from undeveloped subdivision maps to qualify for funds which they spend on Olympic pools and other amenities.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles schools cannot provide adequate space for tens of thousands of students already in the system, she said.

Yaffe said he was not inclined to substitute “fantasy” projects for “fantasy students” and would reject any proposal that amounted to reserving funds for Los Angeles.

After the hearing, both sides claimed victory.