100 South-Central Students Rally for Bond Repair Funds

About 100 students demonstrated at Los Angeles school district headquarters Wednesday, charging that their South-Central-area campuses are being shortchanged in school bond repair plans.

Members South Central Youth Empowered thru Action said schools in the Westside and San Fernando Valley are receiving substantially more funds than older and more crowded campuses in their community.

“Our schools are in the poorest sections and we’re getting the least amount of money,” said protester Wendy Diaz.

Students said the demonstration on Grand Avenue, outside the Los Angeles Unified School District’s main offices, was aimed at the citizen oversight panel set up to review spending of the $2.4-billion Proposition BB school bond approved by voters this year.

Steven Soboroff, chairman of the committee, said he would have been happy to meet with the student group, even if they didn’t demonstrate.

He said the bond oversight committee intends to examine the issue of geographic equity, and vowed that “by the time we’re done, there won’t be [any inequity].”

The student group, which is affiliated with the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment, compared total spending on repairs by school cluster, finding that the Birmingham High School cluster in the Valley and Hamilton High School cluster in West Los Angeles each are scheduled to receive more than $50 million compared with $30 million for the Fremont High School cluster and $15 million for the Manual Arts High School cluster, both in South-Central Los Angeles.