Miliani Rodriguez is a senior at Coachella Valley High School. The school buildings are old, she says, and they show it. The air conditioning often breaks in over 100-degree heat. When it rains, the ceilings leak. The sinks in her ceramics classroom broke and flooded the classroom.

Miliani thought these kinds of things were  normal, after attending school in the Coachella Valley Unified School District since kindergarten. But last year she visited her cousin’s high school, just a couple of miles away from her, and found modern buildings, spacious athletic fields, and working air conditioning.

Now, she is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit, Miliani R. v. State of California, which claims the way the state subsidizes school renovations perpetuates vast inequalities for students, sending more money to districts that already have more property wealth, and locking out poor districts from accessing funding.

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Read more from EdSource: California sued over bond program that sends more money to fix facilities in wealthy school districts

Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.

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