School Building Funds Reserve OKd by Judge

A judge has thrown out a challenge to a system that reserves hundreds of millions of dollars in state construction money for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The Coalition for Adequate School Housing, representing dozens of smaller school districts, attacked the quotas on the grounds that they deny funding to projects that have gone through the state approval process and are ready to go to bid.

Ruling Tuesday, Superior Court Judge David Horowitz said that without giving priority to districts like L.A. Unified that have severe crowding problems, the state money would “fund many less urgently needed projects.”

The state slowed down the distribution of funds and established priorities last September after another Los Angeles judge ruled that students in the most-crowded districts were being denied a fair share. The money is from a statewide bond approved by voters in 1998.