Val Verde Unified School District - Further Appeals Against The State of California

Further Appeals Against The State of California

Val Verde Unified School District stumbled in its lawsuit against state officials over school construction funding, when a Riverside County judge rejected the district's request for a court order against the state on February 29, 2008. Spencer Covert, an attorney for the district argued that school construction money, given by the state to districts in financial hardship, isn't enough to build complete schools, and that districts such as Val Verde shouldn't be punished for borrowing money to cover shortfalls in state funds.

But Covert failed to sway County Judge Edward D. Webster. The judge tore into the district's claim that state agencies that disbursed the $340 million had discriminated against Val Verde by depriving its students of enough money to house them in adequate schools.

"I saw absolutely nothing in your material to suggest that the Val Verde school district was treated any differently than any other school district," Webster said. "... As I went through this I'm saying to myself, 'We're wasting attorney fee monies that could be spent on educating the kids here,' and I thought to myself, this is ridiculous."

As a hardship district, Val Verde has received $340 million in state school construction money since 1999—the second biggest infusion of state cash among all California school districts. It was supposed to cover 100 percent of construction costs but wasn't enough, the district argued.

The fact that Val Verde got a third of a billion dollars from the state to build or upgrade campuses was not lost on Webster, who remarked that this was not "ungenerous."