Supervisors Plan Summit on Financing New Schools

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, repeating its contention that the state should pay for building schools in growth areas such as the Santa Clarita Valley, said Thursday that it would convene a summit on school financing and invite top state education officials.

The board, acting on a motion by Supervisor Mike Antonovich, was prompted to call for the meeting with state schools Supt. Bill Honig and local officials by the ongoing Santa Clarita Valley controversy over who should pay for new schools. School districts and developers in the area have been at odds over the issue for several months.

Santa Clarita school authorities say the construction of housing should be approved only if the developers or the state also provide a means to build schools to accommodate the additional students that their projects will draw.

The supervisors have repeatedly said that school funding is a state responsibility and that, as local politicians, they cannot reject development projects merely because the students they draw might overwhelm schools.

Antonovich said he did not have a plan to solve the school funding crisis. “Our role will be to put the players together to come to a solution,” he said.

Antonovich said the summit should be held before Dec. 7, when the supervisors are scheduled to consider two developments in Castaic that are opposed by two Santa Clarita school districts.

Honig, in a telephone interview, said he welcomed Antonovich’s summit idea because the shortage of funds for school construction has reached crisis proportions. Education officials say the state will need $17 billion by the year 2000 to build schools for the state’s exploding school-age population.

“We are out of money in the state construction program,” Honig said.

Antonovich also said he agreed with a recent opinion by County Counsel De Witt W. Clinton, who advised the supervisors to ignore an appellate court decision that indirectly gave school districts some power to control growth.

The state Court of Appeal ruled a year ago in Mira Development Corp. vs. City of San Diego that cities and counties could deny zoning changes for developments if the projects would overwhelm available public services, including schools. The state Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the case.

The Mira decision did not explicitly give school authorities the power to control growth. It did, however, give them ammunition with which to argue that cities and counties should reject projects that might cause school crowding.

Builders said the decision could force them to give school districts enticements, such as land or money, to win their support. In an Oct. 19 memo to the supervisors, Clinton said such concessions from developers would violate a state school financing law that caps the amount developers must contribute to build new schools.

Just four months earlier, Clinton had said the supervisors should abide by the provisions of the Mira decision.

But Honig, unlike Antonovich, said he supported the Mira ruling. “I think that if you’re going to have development, somebody has to provide for schools,” he said.

Two districts in the Santa Clarita Valley--William S. Hart Union High School and Castaic Union School District--have cited the Mira case when opposing building projects.

Antonovich expressed irritation with the two school systems. “It is interesting to note that despite all of the growth throughout the county, only the school districts in the Santa Clarita Valley have confronted the board with the argument that the county is somehow responsible for providing the funding of new schools,” he said.