Over a million California schoolchildren – predominately from low-income families and communities of color – attend severely overcrowded schools. Attempts are made to alleviate overcrowding by using lunchrooms, libraries, and an assortment of other spaces as classrooms and by such temporary measures as reorganizing – even shortening – school years, busing children to other neighborhoods, and using portable classrooms. However, the fact remains that children who attend overcrowded schools are less able to learn, feel socially inferior and alienated, and are more exposed to health and safety hazards.
In 2005, PolicyLink partnered with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) to produce Ending School Overcrowding in California, Building Quality Schools for All Children, a joint report that illustrates California’s school overcrowding crisis, analyzes the state’s New Construction and Critically Overcrowded Schools programs, discusses structural barriers to addressing school overcrowding, and outlines policy recommendations for more equitable distribution of school construction funds.
Since the release of the report, PolicyLink staff has been invited to be expert panelists and presenters at numerous meetings, conferences and hearings, including the Los Angeles Unified School District Bond Oversight Committee monthly meeting, the California Center for Regional Leadership Annual Civic Entrepreneurs Summit, the Coalition for Adequate School Housing monthly meeting, and the state Select Committee on Growth and Infrastructure hearing. Media presence has continued in the form of op-eds, radio interviews, and quotes in newspaper articles.
Given the prospect of a new school construction bond and the need to ensure that the process for any new funding is more equitable, PolicyLink and MALDEF assembled a meeting of administrators from some of the largest and most overcrowded school districts in the state, as well as experts from the California Department of Education, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Advancement Project. This group began the refinement of a policy proposal for more practical, equitable investment of construction dollars; a version of this policy proposal – a $1 billion set-aside for overcrowded schools with portable classrooms – was included in a California Legislature infrastructure bond proposal that also intends to fund the repair of roads, prevention of flooding, and construction of housing in urban areas and near public transportation.
PolicyLink staff and its allies – MALDEF, Advancement Project, and UCLA IDEA -- are now working to educate grassroots organizations on the importance of participating in the state school bond process, and performing research to support community efforts to improve local facilities.