Growth Spurt at LAUSD

摘要

While its mission of building new schools and making existing school facilities better is certainly admirable, one must look beyond this simple statement to realize the true impact of the commitment and dedication of the Los Angeles Unified School District's (LAUSD's) facilities services division to its communities and their future leaders. Not only is the district's $19.2-billion school construction and repair program clearly aggressive, it is unsurpassed in the United States. In the mid-1990s, LAUSD had not engaged in any comprehensive school-building program for three decades, but soon found itself in a severely overcrowded situation. To compound circumstances, growth rates also pointed to an eventual shortage of 200,000 classroom seats. Forced to find interim solutions - such as busing students out of neighborhoods to less-crowded schools, supplementing existing space with bungalow-type buildings, or turning to year-round calendars (with abbreviated, 160-day academic cycles) to accommodate needs - the district and voters recognized how unacceptable these conditions were for the long term. And, they were willing to pay to fix it. The initial set of projects was funded under Proposition BB in April 1997.