The Los Angeles Unified School District has withdrawn a claim that sought millions of dollars in new state funding to keep student bathrooms clean, unlocked and in working order.<\/p>\n
The district had sought $22 million — and about $9 million annually — in the wake of a 2003 state law requiring that restrooms \u201cshall at all times be maintained and cleaned regularly, fully operational and stocked at all times with toilet paper, soap, and paper towels or functional hand dryers.\u201d <\/p>\n
The law also required that bathrooms be unlocked when students need them except when closed for specific repairs.<\/p>\n
About a year later, L.A. Unified submitted a claim to the California Commission on State Mandates, which has the authority to decide that the state must foot the bill when a new law creates new costs for a public agency.<\/p>\n
The nation\u2019s second-largest school system said that in 2004 it had spent $13.7 million for repairs and upgrades\u00a0and nearly $9 million for additional workers. The district\u2019s new standard has been to \u201croutinely clean bathrooms as often as every night and spot clean and restock them twice a day,\u201d said district spokeswoman Shannon Haber.\n<\/p>\n
But the commission’s staff\u00a0was unmoved, noting, among other things, that since 1948, state law has required \u201csufficient patent flush water closets.\u201d The new law merely clarified \u201csufficient\u201d and established a new complaint and response process, according to the staff analysis.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The law itself resulted from a\u00a0broadcast news investigation\u00a0of poorly maintained\u00a0bathrooms at more than 50 schools. Bathroom issues have periodically plagued L.A. Unified. In 2000, interim Supt. Ramon C. Cortines pledged a \u201cbooks and bathrooms\u201d initiative. (The books portion referred to textbook shortages.)\n<\/p>\n
The subsequent furor, in 2003, prompted calls for outside inspections and forced Cortines\u2019 successor, Roy Romer, to pledge more resources. And that\u2019s when the district also filed its claim.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were trying to take advantage of every opportunity to get projects funded,\u201d said Mark Hovatter, director of maintenance and operations. \u201cWe saw this as a chance to get state money because we were doing something above and beyond what we were what doing before. We never had a 100% expectation of being successful. It was more like applying for a grant.\u201d<\/p>\n
By 2010, the expectation had dropped to near 0%, so officials gave up rather than wait for the seven-member commission to\u00a0reject their claim. The commission was scheduled to act Friday; L.A. Unified withdrew the claim\u00a0Thursday.<\/p>\n
The district\u2019s current challenges include preserving efforts to keep bathrooms clean during an ongoing budget crisis. Overall custodial services are cut 20% in the tentative budget of Supt. Cortines, who returned to the top job in late 2008.<\/p>\n
–Howard Blume<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Los Angeles Unified School District has withdrawn a claim that sought millions of dollars in new state funding to keep student bathrooms clean, unlocked and in working order. The district had sought $22 million — and about $9 million annually — in the wake of a 2003 state law requiring that restrooms \u201cshall at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4766,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-477672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4766"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}