Opinion ID: 1205046
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Interim harm.

Text: The trial court also expressly concluded that plaintiffs, District students and their parents, would suffer substantial and irreparable harm if a preliminary injunction were denied. This harm, the court further found, would be greater ... than defendants will suffer if the injunction is granted. These determinations were based upon the uncontradicted declarations of District teachers, local and regional public school officials, and academic specialists in the field of public education. Besides detailing the severe and immediate academic disruption which would arise from the pending closure (see discussion, ante, fn. 16, at p. 687), these declarations set forth at length the ripple effect on District parents and students. For example, the declarations recounted, working parents, including the high percentage of needy families in the District, would be faced with expensive child care for the lost school hours; difficult efforts would be required to obtain other placement of the students for the remainder of the year; and special-need students would lose carefully nurtured progress. The State submitted no evidence that it would suffer comparable or greater harm by offering emergency loan assistance necessary to ensure completion of the District's academic program for 1990-1991. Instead, the State simply argued that court-ordered State aid would damage the State's public school policies of local control and accountability. (6) The State nonetheless claims plaintiffs' interim harm showing was inadequate as a matter of law. In the State's view, plaintiffs' declarations failed to establish that the early closure was unforeseeable, or to explain persuasively why any adverse effects on student progress could not be ameliorated. We find the trial court's interim-harm findings amply supported. As previously noted, plaintiffs' preliminary showing suggested that the District's inability to complete its school year arose from its ever-worsening fiscal condition and from the deterioration of its negotiations for emergency aid. The declarations of District teachers uniformly indicated that their lesson plans did not provide for the contingency of early closure. Other declarations detailed the difficulties of alternate arrangements to maintain the educational progress of over 31,000 suddenly displaced District students, who included high school seniors poised for graduation. The court could reasonably infer that orderly planning to minimize the resulting educational disruption had not taken place and was not realistically possible. In any event, the court was not obliged to deny a preliminary injunction simply because plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that irreparable harm to students was unavoidable by other means. The preliminary record properly convinced the court both that plaintiffs had a reasonable probability of success on the merits, and that they would suffer more harm in the meantime if an injunction were denied than the State would suffer if it were granted. This mix of the interrelated relevant factors fully justified the court's decision to grant the injunction. (See Common Cause v. Board of Supervisors, supra, 49 Cal.3d at pp. 441-442; King v. Meese, supra, 43 Cal.3d at p. 1227.) No error appears.