ELECTIONS : ANTELOPE VALLEY SCHOOLS : Tax Hike Fears Cited in Defeat of Measure to Build Campus

School officials Wednesday blamed voters’ fears of higher taxes for the defeat of a ballot measure that would have allowed the community of Lake Los Angeles in the Antelope Valley to have its own high school.

Voters in the small community rejected Measure W by a 56% to 44% margin, according to semiofficial final returns from Tuesday’s election.

The measure would have allowed the Wilsona School District, which serves elementary and junior high school students, to operate its own high school campus.

The area’s high school students currently attend classes in Littlerock, which is 10 miles away, or Lancaster, 20 miles away.

Proponents wanted the area to break from the Antelope Valley Union High School District, which operates those and other high schools, and build its own campus.

But Wilsona officials had warned that they had no money to build the campus and probably would have had to seek a tax increase had the measure passed.

“I think that was the overriding factor in people punching the no vote,” said Wilsona school board President Maurice Kunkel, who had remained neutral on the measure. “Now we can concentrate on the existing problems we’ve been working on without getting a whole set of new ones.”

Sue Stokka, a former school board member who helped lead the campaign for the measure, said, “We just could not get voters away from dollars.” She argued that Lake Los Angeles-area residents probably will end up paying higher taxes eventually anyway to pay for schools needed throughout the Antelope Valley.

The Wilsona elementary school district, located at the eastern end of the Antelope Valley, has three schools and about 2,000 students.

The Antelope Valley school system serves nine non-high school districts spread over a 1,600-square-mile area and several others are also considering breaking away.

The board of the Palmdale School District on Tuesday asked its staff to study leaving the high school district, an idea supported by Supt. Forrest McElroy .

Officials in the nearby Soledad-Agua Dulce Union School District also said they expect a breakaway effort to continue there, despite the Wilsona defeat.

Supt. Tom Brown said organizers of the effort say they have collected enough voter signatures to force an election.