Honig, on School Tour, Urges All-Year Classes : Crowding: The state schools superintendent criticizes legislators for not spending enough on construction.

State Schools Supt. Bill Honig, touring a Santa Clarita high school Thursday that he said was intolerable because of crowding, said it will take a combination of state funds, local bond measures and developer fees to build schools in rapidly growing regions.

Honig also urged school officials, including those in the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys, to adopt year-round calendars to make more efficient use of their facilities.

Honig made the remarks as he toured William S. Hart High School as a prelude to a meeting with superintendents from the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys to discuss curriculum and overcrowding.

“It’s got to be a higher priority in Sacramento,” Honig said of the shortfall of classrooms statewide.

Honig complained that legislators were only willing to place two $800-million bond measures for schools on the June and November ballots. “Even the best they’re offering us is not what we need,” Honig said. The measure for the fall ballot should be amended to raise at least $1.3 billion, he said.

Honig said it appeared certain that an $800-million bond measure would appear on the June ballot. But while Honig met school officials in Santa Clarita, the state Assembly defeated legislation that would have placed the measure before the voters in June.

Assembly Republicans objected to provisions that would have required school districts to set aside some construction contracts for firms owned by women and minorities. Assemblyman Robert Campbell (D-Richmond) said he would bring up the measure again next Wednesday to meet a deadline for the June ballot.

But in Santa Clarita, Honig said state bonds alone will not provide enough money to serve California’s skyrocketing enrollment, expected to grow by 1.6 million students in the next decade.

Toward that end, Honig said he supports a bill that would let school districts raise property tax bills to pay for new schools by a simple majority vote. Such measures require a two-thirds vote to pass.

The superintendent’s visit was the latest in a series of meetings Honig has held with local school officials up and down the state.

As he walked through Hart High School, Honig was given an overview of conditions in the Santa Clarita Valley, where school officials say they must build 33 new schools by 2010--at a cost of $400 million.

“This is just intolerable,” Honig said. “This is the way it is all across the state.”

Hart High School, with a capacity for 1,718 students, has almost 2,100, said Supt. Clyde Smyth of the William S. Hart Union High School District. Unless the district builds a new high school by 1992, Hart will have 2,317 students, he said.

The entire Hart district, with 9,400 students, will have at least 11,569 in two years--roughly 3,300 over its present capacity, Smyth said.

If a new high school is not built in two years, Smyth said, the booming student population may force administrators to revise the curriculum to make the most of limited facilities, such as science labs.

The district may have to cut back on advanced science courses because the labs will be needed for basic courses required of all students, Smyth said.

Smyth endorsed Honig’s plan to raise state construction funds but opposed year-round scheduling, calling it inappropriate for high schools.

Indeed, year-round schooling has already faced tough opposition in the Santa Clarita Valley.

The Newhall School District had planned to switch one overcrowded school to a year-round calendar this summer. But last fall, Newhall trustees bowed to forceful parental opposition and agreed not to launch year-round schools for at least two years.

In California only 30 of 1,018 school systems have switched to some form of year-round schooling, according to education officials. A move to switch the entire Los Angeles Unified School District to year-round education has touched off a storm of protest in that district.