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Los Angeles School Board Abruptly Tables Bond Issue

Posted on: Friday, 29 July 2005, 00:00 CDT

Jul. 28--Minutes away from taking a vote on whether to put a multimillion-dollar construction bond on the November ballot, the Los Angeles school board was forced to table the issue when board member Julie Korenstein abruptly left, followed by Jose Huizar.

A Korenstein staffer said she had to leave to attend to a "personal family issue."

"I had told them I had to leave at 6 and I'm leaving. I have an appointment in the (San Fernando) Valley," Korenstein said at her car in the district headquarter's parking garage.

Huizar, who also had a Wednesday evening appointment, left when board President Marlene Canter started talking about tabling the vote. He would have stayed for a vote, he said.

"If we had stayed another five to 10 minutes, would they have voted on it? No. I looked around the room and knew they didn't have the votes to move this forward, so they were going to table it because they didn't have the votes," said Huizar, who supports putting the bond on the June ballot.

The abrupt departures, after nearly four hours of discussion on the $3.85 billion facilities bond, forced the board to table the vote until 3:30 p.m. today.

"I think there was just some frustration going on. Tomorrow will be a new day," Canter said. "It's a very big vote and I didn't want to take a vote with two board members not there."

The Los Angeles Unified School District board was debating allocating an additional $20 million to the proposed $50 million for charter schools when the board members left.

"Boards do what they do. I just think that this board has a tremendous opportunity to build a lot of schools that really need them," said Caprice Young, president and CEO of the California Charter Schools Association. "I'm very hopeful that tomorrow they're going to see that."

Glenn Gritzner, special assistant to Superintendent Roy Romer, remained optimistic and said their ultimate goal is to get the bond on the ballot.

"Our first priority is to get a bond passed. If that takes an extra day, so be it," he said.

If passed by voters, the bond would allow the nation's second-largest school district to complete its $14 billion construction program by building schools to accommodate 20,000 seats and bringing all elementary schools to a traditional two-semester calendar.

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Source: Daily News - Los Angeles, California

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