Schools Lose $450 Million to Budget Ax

As part of last week’s balanced budget deal, the Clinton Administration had to give up on a plan that would have provided $450 million to help build and modernize schools in California.

Details of the budget compromise are still coming into focus. But administration officials confirmed Friday that they had to sacrifice the proposal to spend $5 billion over five years to help finance school construction projects in order to win Republicans’ support for the budget.

Los Angeles schools would have been eligible to receive at least $116 million over five years. That money could have been used to reduce the cost of borrowing related to the $2.4 billion bond issue approved by voters last month.

Other large California districts--such as Santa Ana, Long Beach, Compton and San Bernardino--also were expecting to receive some of the money.

The General Accounting Office estimates that the nation’s schools need to spend $112 billion merely to repair their facilities. On top of that, school districts are dealing with record increases in enrollment, adding as many as 2.9 million students in the next decade.

California schools are facing the added crunch of finding space to implement the state’s plan to reduce the number of pupils in the early grades to no more than 20 per class.

Historically, however, the U.S. government has played little part in addressing such capital costs and Republicans in Congress resisted getting Washington involved now.

“We didn’t get everything we wanted,” said Department of Education spokesman Rick Miller. “But . . . we had to go with what we thought was otherwise a great deal for education.”

The budget deal includes more money for financial aid for higher education, tax cuts that would help families pay for college, and $260 million to launch a reading tutoring program. Overall, education spending is expected to increase 12%, or $3.2 billion, in fiscal 1998.