School Tally Finds Need to Double Books

The first campus textbook inventory to emerge since The Times outlined a major shortage in the Los Angeles Unified School District indicates that Fremont High School needs to more than double its book supply to provide one for every student in every class.

According to the tally, the South-Central school has just 6,500 textbooks for its 4,200 students, two-thirds of whom attend at any given time. It needs 7,500 more textbooks just to comply with a state law requiring an adequate number of books.

The largest shortfalls are in the required courses of world history, government, English and basic math. There is not a single up-to-date geography book for a new elective course scheduled to start next month or for the special education math class.

Bridging the gap would cost nearly $420,000--4 1/2 times this year’s textbook budget, which was larger than usual because of money from a district legal settlement and the principal’s crusade to replenish supplies.

But there is hope for Fremont. It lies in the very reason the school voluntarily produced an inventory so hastily--long before such tallies will be required of other high schools.

Terri Corigliano, director of media relations at CBS Television, decided to try to fill one school’s wish list, one classroom at a time, after reading The Times story, which used Fremont as an example of the extent of the district’s book shortage.

She said discovering the depth of L.A. Unified’s problem reminded her of her school days, when she doted over the new stack of books she received every fall. It reminded her, too, of her long-standing desire to do something for education.

“I’d been sitting here for a long time trying to figure out what to do that was going to make a difference,” she said.

So she contacted the district’s Adopt-a-School program, which seeks ongoing assistance from local businesses, and asked for the Fremont book inventory.

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Describing Fremont’s subject-by-subject rundown as “pretty concrete, but also a little scary,” Corigliano said she plans to start by circulating a fund-raising letter to her friends and colleagues.

Fremont’s principal, Rosa Morley, has never met Corigliano. In fact, she did not even know the name of the person who had asked for the inventory because the request was filtered through the Adopt-a-School office.

But Morley welcomed the news that someone wanted to help, saying, “It’s a travesty not to have a textbook.”

Because the school district did away with its centralized book ordering division in 1990, there has been no way to keep tabs on book supplies in the 660-campus district. Spending on books at the high school level has lagged far behind even California’s statewide average, which in turn has been among the lowest in the nation.

The situation is worse at schools like Fremont, where rapid student turnover increases book loss.

Despite widespread evidence of the shortage, the school district’s cover letter to Corigliano cautioned that “all schools are provided with an adequate budget for textbooks each year. . . . It is up to the local school-based management committee to decide how this money will be used for instruction.”

Corigliano said that language suggested to her that some schools might be misusing their money, making her plan a harder sell.

The author of the letter, Adopt-a-School Director Eiko Moriyama, , acknowledged Wednesday that “adequate” might have been an overstatement, since available funding is “at the bare minimum.”

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Earlier this week, Supt. Ruben Zacarias said he would require quarterly inventories from every district school and demand that books be the top priority in each school’s instructional materials budget. At the high school level last year, about $72 per student was available for textbooks and other classroom materials, including such things as laboratory supplies and computer software, but only about $22 was spent on books.

Zacarias also vowed to ask the school board to approve a book-loss replacement fund and suggested that he might increase campus book budgets out of anticipated state grants.

Though there is some resentment in the district about such an authoritarian response, Morley said she supports Zacarias’ edict because it matches her philosophy. A straight directive from the top would streamline budget discussions at her school, she said, where there always is some pressure to buy computers and software.

“My perspective is, you have to have the basics before you get to the luxury,” the Fremont principal said. “Students can’t take computers home, no matter how many computers I buy. . . . First I need to teach them to read and write and think, and I can do that with a cheap textbook better than with an expensive computer.”

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Fremont High’s Textbook Needs

Fremont High School is the first Los Angeles Unified school to release a book inventory detailing shortages. Here are some examples of the gap between supplies and need, which will cost an estimated $420,000 to bridge.

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No. of Per-book Subject Students Texts Need price Total English--9th grade 1,050 350 700 $50 $35,000 English--10th grade 1,200 210 1,000 $50 $50,000 Spanish for Native Speakers I 460 157 303 $36 $10,908 Investigating Math 900 260 640 $50 $32,000 Algebra I 1,200 834 366 $50 $18,300 Special Ed./Math 90 0 90 $63.50 $5,715 Biology (Spanish) 160 80 80 $50 $4,000 World History 1,300 500 800 $50 $40,000 U.S. History 900 560 340 $50 $17,000 Government 900 300 600 $50 $30,000 Geography 350 0 350 $50 $17,500

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Source: Fremont High School