Parent Complaints Drew ACLU

This is not your forsaken pocket of inner-city decay.

Brightwood Elementary School is the top performing school in a suburban, middle-class district with highly involved parents. It is both a California Distinguished School and a National Blue Ribbon School that has scored far above average on the state’s new Academic Performance Index.

So how did Brightwood, as well as a nearby high school, end up on a list of 18 California schools that allegedly are so substandard--so plagued by blight and devoid of textbooks and qualified teachers--that they deny thousands of minority students an equal educational opportunity?

Ask the parents. They’ve made so much noise over the years that when the American Civil Liberties Union was looking for plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the state, they were prime candidates.

The parents have complained loudly about the physical conditions at Brightwood and Mark Keppel High School. The elementary school has scant air-conditioning, leaving classrooms sweltering at times, and Keppel dates back to the Depression, with few bathrooms and an archaic electrical system that shorts out daily.

In the last two years, parents and district officials have managed to get only one of three local school bond measures passed, bringing the promise of future money to Brightwood but leaving no relief in sight for Keppel.

So when the ACLU approached several parents, they felt that it could only bring attention--and possibly money--to what was looking like a lost cause.

“We hope the state would put money into the school,” said Bob Gin, an Alhambra resident who has been part of a vocal group pushing for improvements and whose daughters are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

“I think we’re getting a good education for our children. For me it’s just the physical plant.”

ACLU officials say that Alhambra schools may not be the most squalid in California, but that they exemplify the inequities in a state education system where money seems to flow to whiter, wealthier districts. Of the students in the two Alhambra schools named in the suit, 93% are minorities, mostly Asian American.

“It’s not that we’ve identified the worst schools in California,” said Chris Calhoun, spokesman for the ACLU of Southern California. “We haven’t. What the lawsuit says is that you have to be offering a common education.”

But some officials in the 19,000-student Alhambra City and High School District--which also encompasses parts of Monterey Park and Rosemead--were baffled by the news that two of their schools were named among the 18 substandard schools that illustrate the “Mississippification” of California education.

“We were surprised to see it there,” said Julie Hadden, an assistant superintendent in the district. “I’ve worked in L.A. and I don’t think this compares at all. I don’t think our schools are any different than any other California schools.”

Dora Padilla, a former Alhambra school board member who pushed for the bonds, agrees.

“There’s no doubt that they’re in need of repairs to upgrade Mark Keppel,” she said. “But it is not in shambles, like some graffiti-filled wreck.”

Certainly, Keppel has been a sore point in recent years.

While the two other high schools in the district have been recently renovated, its gym ceiling is falling down in chunks and its old steam boiler system works only erratically. The school became a poster child for supporters of Proposition 26--the state initiative that failed this March and would have required only majority votes to pass school bond measures.

“We need new lockers,” said Chi Duong, 16. “My locker can’t lock and people jack my stuff. The bathrooms smell. . . . Look at the school, it’s all old, and it’s pretty dirty.”

The lawsuit alleges that students must sit in classrooms that sometimes reach 110 degrees at Brightwood and don’t have enough textbooks to go around. At Keppel, the electrical system shorts out at least twice a day, erasing students’ computer work. And the 2,100 students share too few books, too few bathrooms and one science lab.

“Students must either forgo lab work or wait for their less-than-weekly opportunity to use the lab,” the lawsuit says.

Fred Navarro, principal at Keppel, said the school desperately needs work, but he wasn’t aware of a textbook shortage.

On a tour of the school Thursday, he pointed out floors that were coming up, jury-rigged wiring for a computer lab and corroded pipes in the science lab.

But it is not exactly the urban nightmare that has come to define parts of Los Angeles Unified School District, officials insist. Both Brightwood and Keppel have a low percentage of teachers with emergency credentials and both rank above the state average on test scores.

Yet to parents in this corner of Alhambra, it is simply unfair that their children must deal with ailing facilities.

“What are we going to do if we can’t get a bond?” said Gin. “Is the city going to condemn the school?”

* LONG PROCESS EXPECTED

The lawsuit over conditions in California schools could take years, experts say. A3

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Class-Action Suit

Here is a list of the Los Angeles County schools named in the ACLU lawsuit. A chart that ran in Thursday’s editions failed to include Asians in the ethnic profile of the schools.

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% of blacks, School District Asians, Latinos Berendo Middle Los Angeles Unified 99 Brightwood Elementary Alhambra City Elementary 93 Cahuenga Elementary Los Angeles Unified 95 Carver Middle Los Angeles Unified 99 Freeman Elementary Inglewood Unified 99 Jefferson Senior High Los Angeles Unified 100 Lynwood Middle Lynwood Unified 99 Mark Keppel High Alhambra City High 94 Webster Middle Los Angeles Unified 96

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Compiled by Los Angeles Times from California Department of Education data