State Aid Differences Among School Districts Seen as ‘Inequitable’

In Orange County, sometimes a distance of one city block means a child is in a handsomely funded school district instead of a financially troubled one.

Take, for example, the western Orange County area, where Garden Grove Unified School District meets neighboring Los Alamitos Unified. The homes are similar. But a schoolchild in Garden Grove Unified gets $457.17 per year less funding from the state than his counterpart in Los Alamitos Unified. Multiplied by several thousand students, the funding difference means millions of dollars.

“I think it’s certainly inequitable,” Supt. Ed Dundon of Garden Grove Unified said. “We don’t take the difference in fundings between Garden Grove and Los Alamitos personally, but it does seem unreasonable.”

There are many differences in the state’s per-child funding of the county’s 29 school districts--differences that usually have nothing to do with housing costs and property values. They trace back to a tortured pattern of state laws, a 1976 state Supreme Court decision and the passage of Proposition 13, which put a ceiling on property taxes in 1978.

Funding Levels

In Orange County, funding per child in 1988-89 will range from a low of $2,473.36 in Yorba Linda Elementary School District to a high of $3,219.17 in Huntington Beach Union High School District.

The funding limits are critical as the districts, especially those with high schools, continue to wrestle with declining enrollment.

State law funds elementary school districts at rates lower than unified districts, which have kindergarten through high school. High school districts (usually called “union high school districts”) get more funding per student than either unified or elementary districts. The state’s assumption is that high school costs per student are higher than those in the elementary grades.

But even among the same types of districts, large per-student funding differences exist in Orange County. And Orange County school districts are generally funded at a lower per-student rate than the state average, for the same reasons that funding varies between districts.

Statewide Average

All three of Orange County’s high school districts will have a lower per-student funding in 1988-89 than the state average. The average for all high school districts in California is $3,254 per student. Huntington Beach Union High School District this year will get $3,219.17 per student; Anaheim Union High School District will receive $3,212, and Fullerton Joint Union High School District will get $3,198.41.

The statewide per-student funding average for unified school districts is $2,784. Of Orange County’s 12 unified school districts, five in 1988-89 will get per-student funding above the state average, and seven will be below that level.

Only two of Orange County’s 14 elementary school districts will be getting state funding in 1988-89 above the statewide average for elementary districts, which is $2,615 per student.

These differences in funding by the state cause many school officials to see red.

Said Edgar Z. Seal, superintendent of Brea-Olinda Unified in north Orange County: “There’s just a real inequity in the way schools are funded, and somehow the legislators have to rectify that.”

The term “revenue limit” is the magic word in figuring out a school district’s income. “Revenue limit” refers to the per-child funding assigned by the state. The limit is based on a complex formula of what the school district’s local taxation level was in 1972-73, when a state law imposed a lid, and the various cost-of-living and so-called “equalization” adjustments added to the formula in the intervening years.

The state Supreme Court, in its landmark Serrano-Priest decision in 1976, upheld a lower court that ordered the state to equalize the per-student expenditures in the school districts.

Court Order

The lower court’s order was for districts to have less than $100 difference in per-pupil funding but with a gradual phase-in over a six-year period. The state implemented the decision by beginning to give less money to “rich” districts, such as Beverly Hills, and by giving more to poor districts, such as Compton.

But in 1978, the process got more complicated. State voters approved a constitutional amendment, Proposition 13, which put a ceiling on property taxes. The net effect was to shift the burden of school taxation from local districts to the state government.

For a school district with declining enrollment, a high revenue limit does not help much. Huntington Beach Union High School District, for instance, has the highest per-student funding in Orange County. But it is also one of the poorest districts because it has had a declining enrollment for the past 10 years.

A growing school district can also be stymied if it has a low per-student revenue limit. Officials in Santa Ana Unifed and Capistrano Unified have said their rapidly growing school districts are underfunded because of low revenue limits. Both of those districts are getting per-student funding this year below the state average. Even though the amount per student appears small, the dollar differences mount quickly.

Santa Ana Below Average

For instance, Santa Ana Unified is getting $32.13 per student less this year than the state average. The district has an enrollment projection of 39,321 students this school year. A total of 39,321 students times $32.13 would equal more than $1.2 million for the school district to spend on education this year.

State Sen. Gary Hart (D-Santa Barbara), chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said in a recent interview that the state needs to narrow the gap between funding differences among school districts of a similar grade structure.

“The difference in funding is tolerable as long as the state is making modest strides by putting in equalization money each year to raise low-wealth districts closer to high-wealth districts,” Hart said. “But in recent years, the state has not been putting that equalization money into the budget.

“Actually, I think the whole funding situation for California elementaries and high schools is embarrassing,” he said. “I think we’re falling down and aren’t helping our kids as we should.”

STATE FUNDING PER STUDENT Orange County’s school districts have a vast range in per student funding by the state.

The following lists schools by type of districts, together with statewide averages for their category. The amount shown is how much money the state will give the district this school year for each full-time student. District. . . . . . . . . . . Amount HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICTS State average . . . . . . $3,254.00 Hunt. Beach Union . . . . .3,219.17 Anaheim Union. . . . . . . 3,212.00 Fullerton Joint. . . . . . 3,198.41 UNIFIED DISTRICTS Los Alamitos. . . . . . . $3,213.00 Newport-Mesa . . . . . . . 3,088.00 Laguna Beach . . . . . . . 2,883.00 Tustin . . . . . . . . . . 2,811.00 Saddleback Valley . . . . .2,784.68 State average . . . . . . 2,784.00. Orange . . . . . . . . . . 2,776.84 Irvine . . . . . . . . . . 2,776.00 Brea-Olinda . . . . . . . 2,758.00 Placentia . . . . . . . . 2,756.48 Garden Grove . . . . . . . 2,755.83 Capistrano . . . . . . . . 2,755.83 Santa Ana . . . . . . . . .2,751.87 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DISTRICTS Cypress . . . . . . . . . $2,855.00 Centralia . . . . . . . . .2,694.95 State average . . . . . . 2,615.00 Lowell Joint . . . . . . . 2,607.10 Savanna . . . . . . . . . 2,601.58 Buena Park . . . . . . . . 2,591.00 Fountain Valley . . . . . .2,581.17 Fullerton . . . . . . . . .2,578.83 Anaheim City . . . . . . . 2,571.77 Huntington City . . . . . 2,570.00 Westminster . . . . . . . .2,569.00 La Habra . . . . . . . . . 2,562.75 Magnolia . . . . . . . . . 2,562.75 Ocean View . . . . . . . . 2,558.14 Yorba Linda . . . . . . . 2,473.36 Source: Individual school districts