Right Numbers for Oak Park, Moorpark

Oak Park and Moorpark schools hit the jackpot in the first-ever state lottery for school construction projects, but El Rio, where parents and officials have been working for more than three years to build a new gym and community center, looks like a loser.

At 9:30 a.m. in Sacramento, officials from the State Allocation Board--which distributes funds for education construction projects across the state--rolled 75 numbered wooden balls from a metal cage to determine which projects would receive a percentage of California’s $23-million school construction fund.

The El Rio project, whose organizers requested $800,000 to erect a facility at Rio del Valle Junior High, was the 41st pick, while Moorpark, which requested $805,000 to build a gym at Chaparral Middle School, was the 19th pick.

Oak Park, which filed for $480,000 to construct a library at Oak Park High School, was the 20th district chosen.

The maximum allocation a project may receive is $1 million, and each project requested between $100,000 and $1 million, state officials said.

On Aug. 27, state officials will make an announcement identifying the projects that will receive funds, based on the order they were picked in the lottery. It’s not clear how many projects will get money because state officials did not reveal how much each district requested.

In light of their positions in the drawing, Moorpark and Oak Park have a strong chance of receiving funds. But the prospects for El Rio do not look good.

“Based on the projects that are ahead of us and the amount that they requested, there would have had to have been $27 million for us to receive any money,” said Rio Supt. of Schools Yolanda Benitez. “The only hope now is that a project will be disqualified for some reason.”

In contrast to Benitez, Moorpark and Oak Park school officials were decidedly upbeat about the results.

“I was pleased [with the results],” Moorpark Unified School District Supt. Thomas Duffy said. “I had believed all along this project would come to fruition and I’m pleased we’ll have a gym for Chaparral Middle School.”

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Oak Park officials were hoping the good news was true.

“If it proves out [that we will receive the funds] . . . it will be a wonderful opportunity for the high school and the community,” said Oak Park Unified School District Supt. Marilyn Lippiatt.

To qualify for the drawing, projects had to be proposed jointly by schools and communities, with local government and schools combining funds.

The state funds became available in 1996 when California voters passed Proposition 203, which provides state grants for joint city-school projects.

Initially, funding requests were to be evaluated on a first-come, first-serve basis, but the allocation board changed that in June, turning instead to a lottery system. El Rio project organizers, who applied for funds in May 1996, believe the change in rules was unfair.

“It was incredibly disappointing to watch that lottery after all this work,” Benitez said. “It didn’t matter how long ago you applied, the merits of your project, or how needy the community is.”

Benitez, who attended the lottery in Sacramento, said El Rio, a low-income unincorporated area with a student enrollment of 2,920, does not have a single gym.

During the past three years, the community raised $1 million for a facility, and thought they had received a godsend when 203 was passed. Now organizers are hoping they can persuade state officials to revisit the lottery results.

“It took us three years to raise this money and to get an agreement with the county, and some communities put their projects together in a couple of weeks--that doesn’t seem possible to me,” El Rio School Board President George Perez said.

Perez said he and other organizers plan to talk with their state legislators and “anyone who will listen,” to their concerns that other applicants may not have met lottery entry requirements. They said a number of districts put their applications in at the last minute.

Times correspondents Regina Hong and Lisa Fernandez contributed to this report.