BOND PANEL: IGNORED AGAIN OVERSIGHT GROUP WANTS TO BE CONSULTED IN SCHOOL MATTERS.

Byline: Jennifer Radcliffe Staff Writer

Los Angeles Unified School District's bond oversight committee members expressed growing discontent with school officials working around them, approving a resolution Wednesday asking that expenditures for the massive construction program be made more transparent.

The action was prompted by the school board's approval of a deal to take 5,500 new school seats promised for the San Fernando Valley and give them to lower-income areas to settle a lawsuit without properly consulting with the oversight committee which is legally empowered to consider expenditures before decisions are made.

``We are concerned about a pattern that keeps happening,'' oversight chairman Robert Garcia said Wednesday, adding the committee is continually left out of the loop on important spending issues.

Specifically, the board should consider impacts to bond money, overcrowded schools and LAUSD's working relationship with the bond committee.

These are basic responsibilities under state law that requires the bond committee to advise and oversee how LAUSD spends the more than $10 billion that voters have approved since 1997 to build and repair schools.

``We're not asking for Mount Rushmore,'' committee oversight member Connie Rice said.

Board members acknowledged that communication between the board and the committee needs to be improved.

``This is a part-time citizens' oversight committee talking to a part- time school board about big-time money,'' said board member David Tokofsky.

``Is that the best way to handle things? Probably not.''

The oversight committee's concerns surfaced hours after the school board voted 6-1 late Tuesday to shift seats from the Measure R bond out of the San Fernando Valley. While the committee was given a brief presentation on the shift in November, LAUSD officials failed to spell out the ramifications, committee members said.

School board member Julie Korenstein called the board's rushed decision - made just before midnight Tuesday - unconscionable.

``This was a huge, monumental decision to make,'' Korenstein said. ``It's just not a good way to do it.''

LAUSD officials insist that shifting the seats was the best way to comply with a new state law designed to improve schools for poor and minority students. Under the law, LAUSD must submit a plan by Jan. 1 that outlines how the district will get overcrowded schools off shortened calendars by 2012. The district's answer moved 5,500 seats out of the Valley and could even lower the total number of classroom seats being built by Measure R from 49,000 to 42,000.

``I feel very sensitive to the Valley,'' Romer told the board Tuesday. ``For better or worse, we're one district. We have a responsibility, and I think it's a moral responsibility to find a space for every child.''

Jennifer Radcliffe, [phone]

jennifer.radcliffe(at)dailynews.com