50% Success Rate of School Bonds Encourages Santa Clarita Districts

Should Santa Clarita Valley school officials decide to place a school bond issue on the ballot, they may have a better chance at persuading voters to tax themselves than they think.

An examination of recent school bond issues in California shows that, surprisingly, about half of them passed, officials say. And that’s despite needing an intimidating two-thirds approval for passage.

This optimistic outlook may come as welcome news to Santa Clarita Valley school officials, who are considering a bond measure to replace a voter-approved tax on new homes that was struck down by the state Court of Appeal.

The ruling, one superintendent said half-jokingly, leaves the schools with two fund-raising options--a bond measure or a “prayer.”

Against this backdrop, the valley’s five school boards plan to meet Thursday to take a “very serious look” at a bond measure, said Supt. Clyde Smyth of the William S. Hart Union High School District.

Districts Need $210 Million

The Santa Clarita Valley is the fastest-growing region in Los Angeles County. Its five school districts--Saugus, Castaic, Sulphur Springs, Newhall and William S. Hart--predict that they will need more than $210 million to build at least 13 new schools by 2000.

When the trustees meet, they will review the recent track records of school districts that succeeded--or failed--to persuade voters to support bond issues. In many instances, the record is encouraging.

Since 1986, 16 of 33 general obligation bonds have passed in California, said Jim Donnelly, director of educational policy for the California Taxpayers Assn. in Sacramento. In November, eight of 14 school districts won support for $54 million in bonds.

The success rate is better than some Santa Clarita Valley trustees had imagined. “I’m surprised to learn that,” said Betty L. Lund, Saugus school board president.

But getting a bond measure passed has its price. For starters, district officials must become politicians. They must recruit an army of parent volunteers and door-to-door precinct walkers, attract heavy media coverage, stage rallies and, in some cases, hire political consultants.

“But isn’t that a shame?” Lund said. “We shouldn’t have to become politicians.”

However uncomfortable, it’s a role that appears inevitable should the valley’s districts decide to ask voters to open their pocketbooks.

Hardest Workers Win

“Those who worked hardest usually won,” said state Sen. Bill Leonard (R-Big Bear), who has followed recent school bond elections closely.

“It was just a lot of hard work,” Supt. Joseph Anthony said about getting a $34-million bond measure approved in the 4,500-student Acalanes Union High School District in Northern California in November. The measure won 70% of the vote and was the largest school bond issue passed by California voters in the fall.

“I bet we had 1,000 parents working,” Anthony said. “We had prepared two years for the thing.”

The Acalanes district’s four high schools obviously needed refurbishing--”They’re falling down,” Anthony said--but the district took no chances and paid a consultant $22,000 to guide the campaign.

In the Simi Valley Unified School District, where a bond measure failed by about 100 votes in November, school officials are waging a glitzy campaign to promote two new measures totaling $43 million. The district has staged “Talent Nights” where students sing and dance in between short, punchy presentations about school bonds.

Winning Never Easy

Why do districts resort to such tactics? Winning a two-thirds vote on just about anything is never easy, Leonard said. Even Proposition 13, often described as a wholesale taxpayers’ revolt, didn’t muster a two-thirds majority when it passed in 1978.

Before Proposition 13, school bonds required only a simple majority to pass, Donnelly said. The tax-cutting proposition eliminated the ability of school districts and other government agencies to seek general obligation bonds. That right was restored by Proposition 46 in 1986, Donnelly said, but with the two-thirds requirement added.

The two-thirds requirement discourages many school districts from attempting bond measures, Leonard said. He has proposed a constitutional amendment that would let bond measures pass with a simple majority. The amendment would also limit bond measures to 10-year life spans, thus reducing the tax obligations of property owners, he said.

In any case, Leonard’s proposal would come too late for the Santa Clarita Valley. To get the measure on the November ballot, districts will have to decide whether to ask for it by May, Smyth said.

And while the lessons learned by other districts have been duly noted, they may not always apply to the Santa Clarita Valley, Smyth said. A strong slow-growth sentiment prevails in the valley, and residents there may believe that halting development, not building new schools, is the way to prevent classroom crowding, he said.

Another factor is that bond measures tend to do better in small districts than in larger ones, Smyth said.

Moreover, it appears that another bond measure--one for roads--will compete for the votes of Santa Clarita Valley residents in November. That proposal would add from $75 to $200 annually to residents’ property-tax bills.

Competing bond measures sometimes cancel each other out, Donnelly said. Such was the case in November in Anaheim where two measures lost--a $30-million bond issue for roads and a $20-million measure for storm drains.

Santa Clarita Valley school officials are also studying proposals to delay building schools, such as holding double sessions, adopting year-round schedules and installing more temporary classrooms on already crowded campuses.

Saturation Point

Each campus reaches a saturation point and that point gets closer each day, said Susan Ostrom, president of the Sulphur Springs board of trustees. Ostrom’s district opened a school in September. “It’s now full,” she said.

In the next 11 years, school officials predict, the valley will need to build at least four high schools, four junior high schools and five elementary schools.

The districts had hoped to build some of the schools with funds raised through a voter-approved tax on new development. But on Feb. 16, the state Supreme Court let stand a Court of Appeal ruling that voided the tax. The appeals court said the tax exceeded a state school-finance law that already requires developers to pay $1.53 for each square foot of new housing they build.