Schools: Yes on 75

California has run out of money to build new schools and to repair old ones, but new students keep showing up by the tens of thousands. In creased birthrates and immigration are causing the school population to boom, with the state anticipating an enrollment growth of 140,000 students a year for the next five years. Students cannot learn in cramped classrooms, or work without classrooms at all, so California must pass the $800-million school-bond issue, Proposition 75, on June 7. Another $800-million bond issue will be on the November ballot.

Some people think that lottery money can meet the schools’ construction needs. It cannot. Voters said specifically in approving the lottery that its money must go to educational programs, not school construction, and that is as it should be.

School-bond money is spent almost as fast as it is passed by voters. The $400 million authorized in November, 1986, and available that January was fully divided by the State Allocations Board the following July. The other $400 million approved at the same time was divided in December. Another $900 million worth of school projects are ready to go, but not a foundation can be poured or a classroom constructed until the money is available.

Projects already planned are not the entire story, either. School districts have already filed a total of $4 billion in applications for school construction money, and school officials estimate that another $7 billion will be needed over the next five years for building or modernizing schools, installing air conditioning in year-round schools and providing portable classrooms.

The Los Angeles Unified School District alone could receive $335.9 million from the June andNovember bond issues combined. Last fall a consultant for the school district told legislators that Los Angeles needs 92 new elementary schools, 27 junior highs and 18 senior highs--costing $4.6 billion in current dollars--to house 184,000 new students by 1997.

Los Angeles is by no means the only area affected by the surging student enrollments. Riverside County is expected to experience a 72% increase in students between now and 1996, San Bernardino County 60%, San Joaquin County 57%, Sacramento County 42%, Kern County 42%, San Diego County 38% and Fresno County 36%.

Those numbers represent a steady worsening of crowding in classrooms that are already overcrowded unless California voters act to ease the situation. A long list of state officials and organizations urge voters to do so. Gov. George Deukmejian has endorsed the school-bond issue, as has Bill Honig, the superintendent of public instruction. The major statewide groups representing school boards, school administrators, teachers, maintenance workers and parents support the bond issue.

The California Chamber of Commerce also urges businesses and others in the community to get behind the bond issue, knowing that the quality of the state’s future workers will drop sharply if students must continue attending school in overcrowded conditions.

All the school reforms passed and yet to come cannot have the effect that they are designed to have unless students can study and learn in safe, uncrowded classrooms. The final number to remember is Proposition 75, the School Facilities Bond Act of 1988. Vote Yes on 75.