California lawsuit asks judge to halt billions for school repairs until state commits to grant it equitably

Attorneys for parents and students in school districts with unsafe, unhealthy and inadequate facilities that say they can’t afford to fix asked the Alameda County Superior Court on Friday to freeze $3 billion in state funding for building repairs until the court has ruled on their lawsuit challenging the state’s funding system.

The motion for an injunction argues that the state’s funding formula “shortchanges” property-poor districts, condemning children to subpar school buildings.

“Our students in rural schools deserve a chance to learn in a safe and modern environment,” said Terry Supahan, executive director of True North Organizing Network in California’s North Coast, in a statement Friday. “We must freeze this money until we can figure out how to distribute the money fairly.”

An injunction, if approved, could further delay state matching funding for modernization projects for hundreds of school districts, already facing yearslong waits after past state funding dried up. It could also put pressure on Gov. Gavin Newsom to seek a settlement to the lawsuit. A court hearing is scheduled for May 13.

The action is the next step in the lawsuit filed in October. The plaintiffs argue that the formula illegally favors wealthy districts — those whose high property values enable them to gobble up the lion’s share of matching state bond money for upgrading schools on a first-come, first-served basis.

The result, the lawsuit said, compounds a “stark and enduring disparity.”

High-wealth districts like Palo Alto have impressive arts and wellness centers, expansive science labs and the latest technology, while students in low-wealth districts like Salinas City Elementary School District “attend facilities with unsafe and degrading conditions — including water damage, asbestos, mold, inadequate HVAC, unsafe playgrounds, and unusable bathrooms — that materially impair their ability to learn,” the lawsuit said.

Denying these children — mostly low-income Black and Latino students — an equal educational opportunity would violate the California Constitution, the lawsuit states.

The plaintiffs say they will be “irreparably harmed” unless the funding spigot is shut off before the state hands out what remains of $4 billion in modernization money that voters set aside in Proposition 2, a $10 billion bond issue passed in November 2024 for TK-12 schools and community colleges.

“These funds and the educational opportunity are too important to stand by and watch another $4 billion go out unfairly,” said John Affeldt, managing attorney for the San Francisco-based public interest law firm Public Advocates, which is representing the plaintiffs with the law firm Morrison Foerster.

The plaintiffs include 14 students, parents and teachers in districts that include Del Norte Unified near Oregon, Coachella Valley Unified, Lynwood Unified, Parlier Unified, San Bernardino City Unified and Stockton Unified. Three advocacy organizations – True North Organizing Network, Alianza Coachella Valley, and Inland Congregations United for Change – are also plaintiffs.

The lawsuit names the Office of Public School Construction and the California Department of Education among the defendants. The lawsuit is Miliani Rodriguez v. State of California, after the named plaintiff, an 18-year-old senior at Coachella Valley High School.

This bathroom in a 59-year-old portable building in Fall River Joint Unified School District shows black mold and rusted-out floor joists.

The injunction would not apply to the initial group of modernization projects, with state funding of about $900 million, that the Office of Public School Construction has already signed off on or is about to approve in May.

One district cited in the lawsuit is Fall River Joint Unified in Shasta County, a rural district of 1,100 students, 10% of whom are Native Americans. Superintendent Morgan Nugent said that to casual viewers, his century-old buildings “look good on the outside but with infrastructure that is falling apart.” There is asbestos contamination in most buildings and portables, all over 60 years old and falling apart, and ancient gas lines that have required emergency repairs. The district is still paying off its last bond, issued two decades ago, Nugent said.

During December’s steady rains, water poured inside the walls of the high school. “Simply mopping it up will not solve the issue,” he said.

“Just give me classrooms where floor joists aren’t falling apart and buildings without black mold.”

Another school soldiering through a wet winter is Lincoln Elementary in the Salinas City Elementary School District, also cited in the lawsuit, which EdSource observed last fall. A leaky roof had forced a repair crew to tear out the wet, moldy insulation in a wall in third-grade teacher Raul Leon’s classroom.

“Restrooms went out yesterday again (in the main building),” Leon texted Feb. 27. “They were out for about half the school day.” It happened again the following Monday.

A series of California Supreme Court decisions in the 1970s, Serrano v. Priest, ruled that reliance on property taxes to fund school budgets created vast disparities among districts that violated students’ constitutional rights. But school facilities were unaffected by the Serrano verdict. Districts retained that responsibility; they issued local construction bonds that property taxes funded.

In 1998, the Legislature created the School Facility Program for reducing local districts’ burden by periodically issuing state bonds, the latest being Prop. 2 in 2024. The last one before that was in 2016. Under the formula, all projects that meet the state’s requirements receive roughly the same percentage match, half the cost of new construction and 60% of renovations.

The program has proved advantageous for wealthy urban districts like Los Angeles Unified, with industrial land and downtown commercial properties, and smaller wealthier districts — those with higher taxable property per student from assessments of expensive homes. Districts with less taxable property, like the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, cannot float bonds large enough to stay ahead of all but emergency repairs.

The system fosters additional inequalities:

• Take homeowners in two districts with the same student enrollment, both with plans for a $50 million school modernization. The homeowners in a property-wealthy district would pay a smaller tax rate than homeowners in a property-poor district.
• The first-come, first-served allocation “amplifies” disparities, the lawsuit said. Higher-wealth districts generally have the staff and expertise to get in line early and move through the process quickly, the lawsuit said.
• Property-wealthy districts can afford to complete a building upgrade right away and then seek state reimbursement, while poor-wealth districts must get all approvals first and wait until state modernization money is in before breaking ground, the lawsuit said.

Prop. 2 continues the pattern

A study of state modernization funding from 1998 to 2023 documented the disparities. The Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley found that districts with the most assessed value per student received, on average, two and a half times more state funding than districts such as Salinas City Elementary and the other plaintiff districts, with the least state funding per student.

That pattern continued with the first group of 114 projects valued at $472 million that the State Allocation Board approved in December 2025, said Sara Hinckley, California program manager at the center. Her analysis indicated that wealthier property districts will get most of the funding.

The districts that have benefited the most from the current system will likely oppose the injunction, arguing that voters who passed Prop. 2 were told that the state would pay 60% of their projects’ cost. Districts may have passed a record number of their own bonds on that assumption.

Affeldt said that voters and districts can assume they would get a given match, but there has never been a guarantee that any project would receive it until the last stage of a long approval process, when the allocations board actually approves a project’s funding.

“It is necessary to put a pause on the system until the court addresses the constitutionality,” Affeldt said, adding, “unless the Newsom administration and the Legislature act quickly to address this problem. We would welcome a quick resolution so that we don’t have to go to trial.”

Seven years ago, on signing a bill with minor changes to make the facilities funding fairer, Newsom admitted the system was shameful. “You can’t look in the eyes of these kids and make an argument that the facilities that so many of them are being educated in are appropriate,” Newsom said at the signing ceremony.

The governor didn’t press for substantial reforms in Prop. 2 and declined to comment Friday on the lawsuit or motion for an injunction.