Funds to Avoid Year 2000 Problem OKd

Making sure all computers in the Los Angeles Unified School District have the technological dexterity to change from Dec. 31, 1999, to Jan. 1, 2000, will cost $48.5 million--toward the top of estimates provided to the state’s largest district last fall.

The budget, approved by the school board Monday, is less than those faced by some other bureaucracies, including Los Angeles County, where estimates are twice as high. Nonetheless, the amount gave some board members pause.

“It’s a very mind-boggling figure,” said board President Julie Korenstein.

Spent over the next year and a half, the money will pay for reprogramming and upgrades to everything from security systems and industrial-sized refrigerators to computers and fax machines.

But a large portion of the money will go for replacing the antiquated mainframe computer systems that district staff said would cost more to fix than to discard. As a result, the district will end up better off than before and, for the first time, will have integrated administrative computers that can communicate with one another.

Both consultant Arthur Andersen and members of a district committee overseeing the Year 2000 project stressed the urgency to allocate funds and get moving.

“It creates chaos if we don’t get the date fixed,” said district Technology Director John Nagata. “That translates to erroneous paychecks, to checks that cannot be paid on time.”

In the competitive atmosphere that has followed worldwide recognition of the Year 2000 problem, Nagata said it was important to lock in a maximum price and reserve the time of companies with technological expertise.

Al Shepetuk, a partner in Arthur Andersen, asked board members to mull over “even the most mundane things that you do day-to-day that are date-related.” Without the changes, not only would the wrong date appear in connection with such tasks, he said, but the computers’ futile efforts to find the right date would bring whole systems “to a grinding halt.”

County supervisors were informed last month that it could cost nearly $97 million to prepare their computers for 2000.

In September, Los Angeles Unified had been told the work would cost between $30 million and $52 million. Of the $48.5 million set aside Monday, half will go to software and nearly one-third to hardware. The price includes a contingency fund of almost 10% .