CHARTERS TO GET MILLIONS BACK LAUSD VOTES TO RETURN FUNDS FOR KIDS IN NEED.

Byline: Jennifer Radcliffe Staff Writer

A narrowly divided Los Angeles Unified school board voted Tuesday to return $3 million in funds to educate minority and disadvantaged students to a coalition of charter schools - including five in the San Fernando Valley - that claimed the district unfairly withheld the money.

The Los Angeles Unified School District earlier this year cut the charters from a list of schools receiving some of the $440 million in federal money the district receives to reduce class sizes in schools with large populations of nonwhite students.

About 100 parents, students and teachers from the seven charter schools packed the boardroom to demand the money, which they said was vital for the schools' continued success. The board voted 4-3 to give the money back after 90 minutes of sometimes tense discussion.

``These are the kids who are in most need,'' said board member Margueritte LaMotte. ``I don't know where we're going to get the money, but whenever there's a crisis, we find the money.''

Board members Marlene Canter, Julie Korenstein and David Tokofsky also voted in favor of the charters, which had threatened to sue the district. The coalition is made up of Fenton Avenue, Pacoima Elementary, Montague Academy and Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in Pacoima; Granada Hills High; Santa Monica Boulevard Elementary in Los Angeles, and Palisades Charter High in Pacific Palisades.

Board members Jon Lauritzen, Jose Huizar and Mike Lansing voted against the charters, saying the district doesn't have the money and that students in traditional LAUSD schools should be given priority.

Superintendent Roy Romer had also opposed returning the money, saying charters operate independently from the district and shouldn't expect any of the integration money it receives from the state on a per-pupil basis.

``We can't afford it all. We just simply don't have the money,'' Romer said.

This is the first victory for the Coalition of High-Achieving Los Angeles Charter Schools, a group of conversion charter schools that says the district owes it an additional $4 million in facility maintenance and special education funding for their 14,000 students.

Pleased by Tuesday's vote, the schools hope to avoid a lawsuit with the district to get the remaining funds they say they are owed.

The five elementary schools are 98 percent non-Anglo. The two high schools are 61 percent non-Anglo, according to the coalition.

Charter leaders argued that charter schools are included in the base calculation for integration money and that they helped generate $4.6 million of funding for the LAUSD in the past school year. The charters spent $2.7 million of that funding - leaving the LAUSD with an extra $949,000 in integration funds.

``Clearly our seven schools are not the problem. Our seven schools pay for our programs and continue to generate a surplus for the district,'' said Joe Lucente, executive director of Fenton Avenue Charter School in Lake View Terrace.

For Granada Hills High School, Tuesday's vote means it will get back $630,000 - enough to maintain its after-school tutoring and other intervention programs that threatened to be cut.

Other schools would have had to raise class size or do without new technology.

``You will eliminate the 11 years of progress our schools have made,'' Jasmine Corona, a fifth-grader at Fenton Avenue Charter School, told the board.

Jennifer Radcliffe, [phone]

jennifer.radcliffe(at)dailynews.com