LAUSD'S LAWSUIT SHARE MAY HAVE UNWANTED CATCH.

Byline: Jennifer Radcliffe Staff Writer

The pending settlement of an ACLU lawsuit challenging public school conditions for poor students could bring hundreds of millions of dollars to the Los Angeles Unified School District, but officials worry they might be forced to divert some of the money away from students to fund costly administrative procedures.

``I'm concerned that it's going to raise the bureaucratic costs,'' Superintendent Roy Romer said Wednesday. ``I think as they get this into final legislation they ought to reduce the amount of bureaucratic record- keeping.''

While final details of the plan are not due before Friday, early signs indicate the LAUSD could receive at least $50 million for textbooks and hundreds of millions more over the next several years for campus improvements.

But LAUSD leaders fear that proposed oversight measures to ensure that districts make necessary improvements will duplicate existing efforts and create expensive, administrative redundancies.

School board member David Tokofsky said the proposed settlement is inadequate.

``A lot of groups have just contingently approved it because the glass - after eight months of negotiation - is just more than half full,'' he said. ``What it's full of, I don't know, and if you gave it to a public-school child to drink, whether it would be good for them is not known.''

The 4-year-old class-action lawsuit, known as the Williams case, claims that California neglects its poorest students by sending them to decrepit schools with inadequate textbooks and less-qualified teachers.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office and the ACLU announced earlier this week that they have tentatively settled the lawsuit, but terms must now be passed as legislation, which officials hope can happen before the session ends Sept. 1.

Kevin Reed, Los Angeles Unified's general counsel, said he has issues with some of the settlement terms.

``There are still very significant unanswered questions,'' he said. ``How they're answered could make this a very goofy process.''

For instance, the state has yet to disclose how a $20 million emergency maintenance fund will be divided among as many as 2,400 eligible, low-performing schools.

The more than $1 billion settlement package is expected to include new county-level annual audits and facility report cards. It will require that students have textbooks within two months of the start of school and that strict timelines be set for districts to return students to 180-day calendars.

Currently, students at 131 overcrowded Los Angeles Unified schools attend class only 163 days a year.

Lawyers said the settlement will also include $138.9 million for textbooks, $20 million for districts to survey facilities at low-ranking schools, $30 million to expand the roles of county superintendents and money to expand the number of schools eligible for a special $400-per-student stipend.

LAUSD board President Jose Huizar said he is hopeful the settlement will help close achievement gaps between poor and minority students and more-affluent students.

``I was the minority on this board. I agreed more with the plaintiffs,'' he said. ``Through this whole process I found that we were coming up with excuses rather than trying to come up with solutions.''

Huizar said, however, that the money alone won't solve the problems, especially since it will be spread so thin by the time it reaches classrooms.

Jennifer Radcliffe, [phone]

jennifer.radcliffe(at)dailynews.com