Money May Be Short for New Schools

Outgoing Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer warned Wednesday of a possible $2.5-billion shortfall in the school district’s massive construction program, a result of skyrocketing building costs and steadily declining student enrollment.

“There is a great big elephant in the room,” said Romer, addressing the committee that oversees school construction and modernization. “The inflation of building and land costs has had a tremendous sociological impact on this city, and it has had an impact on us.”

Indeed, building costs have climbed rapidly in recent years. The $200 per square foot for new school construction that district officials had budgeted in 2002 is a distant memory. Today, bids routinely come in at more than $500 per square foot and the district received one recently at more than $625, officials said.

Romer’s warning was not entirely unexpected -- district officials have talked for more than a year about the twin hit of rising costs and falling student numbers on the $19.3-billion program. But on Wednesday Romer put a number on the problem, while outlining his proposal to do something about it and reiterating the need to push ahead.

Romer sketched out plans to create a $1.3-billion reserve fund to help offset the shortfall. The money, he proposed, would be redirected from the roughly $4-billion Measure Y bonds voters approved last year. Though the bond money has yet to be earmarked for specific projects, if the reserve is ultimately approved by the school board and bond oversight committee it would mean at least temporarily scaling back plans to modernize schools, improve district technology and other goals.

An additional $1.2 billion, Romer said, could be recouped elsewhere. Most pressing for the district is whether voters next month approve Proposition 1D, a statewide school construction bond measure that would provide $475 million to the Los Angeles Unified School District to build schools. The district plans to save $300 million by scaling back the fourth, and final, phase of the construction project. For example, district officials originally had envisioned the need to build 21 elementary schools. But, with enrollment continuing to decline, the district now plans to build about 15 campuses.

Romer also said the district would continue to press state lawmakers to overhaul complicated rules that determine how much school districts receive in state construction funds. Under the current guidelines, funding is based on enrollment projections, which means a significant loss of money for the district -- about $900 million.

For the fourth consecutive year, the number of students in district schools fell, with 24,592 fewer children in classrooms.

State Sen. Jack Scott (D-Altadena), chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said he sympathized with the district’s struggle with overcrowded schools, but indicated that he was unlikely to support a change in the eligibility rules.

“There are always finite resources and infinite need,” he said. “There are many other districts with growing enrollment that also have a serious need.... If you start letting LAUSD have all the money they want, what is going to happen to the others?”

District officials chafe at such words. With enrollment declines projected to continue for the next five to seven years, they have had to battle allegations that they are building unneeded schools.

Connie Rice, the civil rights lawyer who is the chairwoman of the independent oversight committee, sternly countered that notion Wednesday, saying that the building project was needed to remedy decades of neglect that had led to severely overcrowded schools and forced busing. Even after the building program is completed, she said, thousands of students will remain in so-called portable classrooms. “We are barely building enough,” she said.

The school system is about halfway through a 12-year plan that has seen more than 60 schools open; about 100 more are on the way.

Romer refused to put one option on the table: “If the marketplace is costing that much for building, should you just stop building? My answer is no. I personally made the decision you don’t stop providing [for] the needs of these kids.... We’ve got to have guts to stay with this program and we have.”

Romer’s report generated little surprise among members of the committee. “This is not necessarily good news,” said Vice Chairman Scott Folsom, who represents a parents group. “The good news is that we’re going ahead.”

Rice floated another alternative -- ask local voters to pass their fifth school bond measure since 1997.

In an interview, Romer said contingency plans did not include another bond measure.

“We’re trying to look for other solutions,” he said. But without a substantial influx of state money, “it looms out there always as something you might have to turn to.”

Romer will retire before the end of the year -- as soon as newly selected Supt. David L. Brewer can take over. Romer’s appearance, which was billed as his final presentation before the bond oversight committee, became an occasion for plaudits.

“Shortly before you came here, this building program was in catastrophic failure -- Belmont [Learning Center] being the prime example,” Rice told Romer. “This is an excellent construction authority, and it wouldn’t have happened without you.”

The building program does, however, have critics, who hold the district accountable for some of the rising costs and project delays. District staff charted some of the recent delays in modernization projects at Wednesday’s meeting, saying that less than half of them slated to begin recently have started on time. Other critics have faulted the school system for not taking full advantage of opportunities to collaborate with public agencies and private developers to create schools that function as community centers.

This year’s decline in enrollment outpaced last year’s loss and was greater than anticipated by about 5,000 students.

Meanwhile, the pull of publicly financed, independently run charter schools continued, with enrollment climbing nearly 6,000 students to 34,961. The overall district enrollment now stands at 708,461 students -- still the nation’s second largest after New York City.