With declining enrollment, L.A. Unified no longer needs to build new campuses. The district is, however, going to continue replacing or updating aging buildings.
L.A. school officials said in a staff report that the district’s needs “are great — more than 60% of school buildings are over 50 years old and desperately in need of upgrades, which means most … students are attending school in deteriorating and aging facilities that do not meet today’s standards for learning and safety.”
The district does have a budget for maintenance, but major repairs or upgrades — such as replacing a roof, updating a WiFi network, replacing an asphalt playground with grass and trees or installing air conditioning in a cafeteria kitchen — are typically paid for out of bonds.
Projections call for about $5 billion for “major modernizations, upgrades and reconfigurations to school campuses.”
Other funding areas include: $75 million for electric buses, $461 million for cafeteria upgrades, $258 million to make spaces accessible for those with disabilities and $70.5 million for security cameras.
About $1.25 billion is to go toward school greening projects. These could include planting trees, removing asphalt from playgrounds, installing outdoor classrooms and erecting shade structures.
This $9-billion bond would be the district’s largest in total dollars, but not in spending value when adjusted for inflation and compared with a $7-billion bond in passed in 2008.
But it’s a lot of money — approaching the size of the $10-billion state education bond that will appear on ballots across California. The state bond includes $1.5 billion for community colleges, which would leave $8.5 billion for all K-12 schools statewide, including those in L.A. Unified — as the district vies separately for its own $9-billion bond.
