District to Correct Tax Assessment Figure

Los Angeles school officials said late Thursday that they would correct a letter distributed to hundreds of thousands of parents that understated how much property owners would pay for the district’s proposed school bond.

The decision to pay for a mass correction came more than two weeks after the district learned that a letter sent home with back-to-school packages contained a typographical error that left the impression that the tax assessment would be $5 a month.

It should have said $5 per month per $100,000 of value, meaning the owner of a house worth $500,000 would pay $25 a month.

The decision to send a corrected letter was made Thursday evening, after a Times reporter inquired about the problem. Gene Krischer, a school district gadfly, had told the Board of Education about the error Sept. 10 at a public meeting. Since then, he said, he has been frustrated by what he considers a runaround.

“If I wanted to pull teeth, I’d have been a dentist,” he said.

District officials said they learned of the error before the meeting, after a parent called a principal. The delay was the result of deliberation on how best to get the information to parents, said Glenn Gritzner, special assistant to the superintendent.

“We’re going back and forth,” Gritzner said Thursday evening, after confirming the decision with the district’s budget office. “Let’s figure out what our options are. Let’s figure out if it’s something that’s easily done. Who pays for it? The call I just got was from a budget person saying you can do this.”

The district plans to send new letters home with younger students, and to mail them to the parents of older students.