Irvine Unified proposes school-improvement bond measure of up to $319 million

A bond worth hundreds of millions of dollars will go on the ballot in June for many Irvine voters to decide whether it will be used to fund improvements to older school facilities.

The Irvine Unified School District board voted unanimously Tuesday night to place the measure on the ballot. Bond revenue ranging from $251 million to $319 million would go toward new science labs, new or revamped instructional spaces for art and music classes, roof replacements, upgraded heating and cooling systems and equipment for career and technology classes.

The bond would be used for projects at 18 Irvine Unified elementary and K-8 schools, five middle schools and five high schools.

“If we don’t do something about this, this will be a community of the haves and have-nots,” board member Sharon Wallin said, addressing differences between facilities in the district’s older schools and new and future schools.

Before making its decision Tuesday, the board opened a public hearing in which more than 20 parents, teachers and other residents voiced a mixture of support and skepticism toward the measure.

Over half the district’s 38 schools are more than 30 years old and need repair, many teachers said.

Among the aging campuses is Brywood Elementary School, where Mary Thomas-Vallens has taught since it opened in 1988.

“Education in our world today is vastly different than when we started 30 years ago,” Thomas-Vallens said Tuesday. “We just need some real basics … like simply having doors [for the classrooms]. … I’ve been told that some of our computers are older than our students.”

Lakeside Middle School teacher Jon Pang spoke in favor of the measure, saying that one of his colleagues teaches in a room on the 36-year-old campus where ceiling tiles fall every time it rains.

Schools affected by the bond proposal are in a School Facilities Improvement District that Irvine Unified adopted Tuesday. It covers a 10-mile strip between Northwood High School in northern Irvine and Bonita Canyon Elementary School in the Turtle Rock neighborhood near UC Irvine.

Only registered voters within the facilities improvement district will be able to vote on the measure. Property owners within the area would be taxed to pay off the bond measure.

The measure will need approval from at least 55% of voters to pass.

There are almost 43,000 parcels in the facilities district, including residential and commercial, according to Irvine Unified spokeswoman Annie Brown.

The value of the proposed bond will be determined by the total assessed value of the properties in the facilities district, based on the owners’ latest tax bill, Brown said.

Affected property owners would pay $29 per $100,000 of their property’s assessed value per year, officials said. The payments would be for 30 years.

Oak Creek Elementary School parent Kristi Smemoe and several other community members questioned why only property owners in that area would have to pay for the bond.

“We don’t want to oppose the bond. … It’s just not fair that some have to pay and some don’t,” Smemoe told the board Tuesday.

Board member Paul Bokota and Asst. Supt. of Business Services John Fogarty said property owners in Irvine’s newer neighborhoods, such as Beacon Park and Portola Springs, already pay a tax to build schools in those areas.

Property owners in the facilities improvement district would be paying less than owners in the newer neighborhoods, Bokota and Fogarty said.

“This is an imperfect measure and not everyone is going to be happy,” Bokota told the Daily Pilot. “But it is the solution that is the most equitable.

“This is not about having a pretty building,” he said. “It’s about the delivery of educational content.”

University High School student Tristan Malhotra said the measure would greatly affect the well-being of students at the campus.

“It’s about our quality of life as students in school, which is where we spend the majority of our day,” he said. “I need to be able to play in orchestra and I want to be able to practice in a room that’s not 100 degrees where my fingers are slipping on a bass with sweat.”

Brown said the district’s facilities staff has already met with school officials in the facilities improvement district about the greatest needs at their sites.

Final lists for each school were not available Wednesday.

District officials said the measure would not fund additional school capacity or salaries and benefits for administrators, teachers or other staff.