ELECTIONS SCHOOL TAX : Absentee Ballots Will Determine Fate of Parcel Levy : Beverly Hills: The measure is 21 votes short of approval. About 100 absentee votes are uncounted.

After months of campaigning and an eleventh-hour, get-out-the-vote push, proponents of a schools tax in Beverly Hills found that gratification--or even depression--doesn’t come easily.

A parcel tax measure on Tuesday’s ballot, which would raise $4.5 million for the Beverly Hills Unified School District, has so far garnered 66.42% of the votes, short of the two-thirds needed for passage. But a number of absentee ballots remain to be counted.

Those ballots will be counted during a canvass, which begins today and will likely be finished by June 26, said Henrietta Willis, spokeswoman with the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder. It is uncertain when the election results will be known because “there’s no way of determining if (an absentee ballot) is a ballot for Beverly Hills, or Malibu, or whatever.”

County elections officials have told the Beverly Hills city clerk that about 100 Beverly Hills absentee ballots have not been counted, the city clerk’s office said Wednesday afternoon.

Tax proponents were 21 votes shy of the magic number. According to the semiofficial returns, 5855 votes for the tax had been counted, with 2959 votes against.

“You can’t cry, and you can’t celebrate,” Peter Tomarken, husband of school board member Dana Tomarken, said early Wednesday at the Yes on Schools Committee headquarters. The committee has campaigned for the tax since March.

Around 1 a.m. Wednesday, about 60 weary supporters, including Mayor Allan L. Alexander, district administrators, union leaders and a dozen high school students, waited at the headquarters, a storefront office that was formerly used as a toddlers gymnasium. They had stopped nibbling at the giant “Hooray for Volunteers”-inscribed cake and were instead staring blankly at the incoming results posted on the wall.

“It’s like expecting a baby,” parent Faye Refnick said.

Bernard Nebenzahl, co-chairman of the Yes on Schools Committee, told the crowd at 1:30 a.m. to go home, saying “it’s conjecture as to where we’ll be” since some absentee ballots remained uncounted. In an interview later, he said it is unfortunate that with the two-thirds margin needed, “a minority of viewpoint can abuse the will of a majority of a community.”

Earlier in the evening, the mood was festive, with people entering a $25 betting pool and children huddling on the floor doing their homework. Some students had risen at 6 a.m., going out before school to hang personalized notices on supporters’ doors reminding them to vote. Throughout the day, volunteers checked the polls, visited and phoned supporters who had not yet voted, and offered baby-sitting and rides to polling sites. Some had taken the day off from work to devote themselves to the last-minute campaigning.

“If it should really not pass, I don’t think there’s anything more we could’ve done,” said third-grade teacher Irene Easton, who had come in after school to call supporters.

The tax would be levied on each of the commercial and residential parcels of land in the city for the next five years. Parcels would be assessed between $250 and $750 annually, depending on their size and use.

Passage would mean that teachers will get a 3% pay raise for the coming school year that was negotiated during the teachers strike last fall but was made contingent on the parcel tax’s success. Passage would also mean that 48 teachers, nurses, counselors and librarians, and dozens of teaching assistants who have been issued layoff notices will be welcomed back.

Steve Taylor, a high school history teacher and sports coach who faces layoff, said he has been offered a job in another school district but would like to stay in Beverly Hills. “The kids are great,” he said. Frustrating, however, is the fact that since he and most of the other teachers cannot afford to live in Beverly Hills, “(we) can’t even vote in the (the election).”

But “I’ve got to be optimistic,” he said late Tuesday. “My wife and daughter are at home, waiting to see what daddy will be doing tomorrow.”

Anti-tax leader Sherman Kulick said Wednesday that he had expected the tax to definitively lose, and blamed the close race on a relatively low turnout of Republicans. “A lot of conservative (voters), which I imagine are on our side, didn’t go to the polls because there was no excitement in one party. So the Democratic Party, which historically is very liberal . . . got (its) turnout,” he said. About 45% of Beverly Hills’ registered voters turned out to vote on the measure.

He also noted that the Yes on Schools Committee vastly outspent his group, the Beverly Hills Citizens for Cost-Effective Quality Education. The Yes Committee will spend about $157,000 total, according to campaign consultant Kim Karie, which amounts to about $27 for each yes vote thus far. The all-out campaign included marches, lawn signs, glossy leaflets and mailers sent to tenants, alumni and other specific categories of people.

Kulick said his organization spent about $500, or about 17 cents per no vote.

“I’m just hoping money doesn’t buy this election,” he said. “It’s disgraceful, the amount of money they spent on this campaign.”

Tax opponents ran a low-key campaign, with not even an election-night gathering. Photocopies of hand-lettered flyers broadcast their platform of tax revolt and back-to-basics in education. Kulick argued that the district simply has too many frill courses and spends beyond its means.

Opponents also pointed out that Beverly Hills spends $6,000 per pupil annually, more than any other district in Los Angeles County. School districts in other affluent communities such as San Marino and La Canada Flintridge spend less per student, yet their students score as well or better than Beverly Hills students on standardized tests, they noted.

Proponents of the tax, however, argued that Beverly Hills has smaller classes and more Advanced Placement courses and specialist teachers than other districts. The variety and depth of the offerings is what draws many parents to the city, they said.

Their hefty campaign chest, they said, was needed to get their message out and to battle the odds against them. Statewide, school parcel tax elections have had only a 37% success rate. Beverly Hills has a large contingent of residents with no school-age children, while many of the parents--who would likely favor the tax--are recent immigrants and ineligible to vote.

Beverly Hills’ last parcel tax attempt, in 1987, failed. The proposal for a flat-rate tax of $270 per parcel was approved by 59% of the voters, short of the two-thirds needed.

“If the city of Beverly Hills won’t pay $300 or $750 for education, it’s setting a horrible precedent for the state of California,” sophomore Gina Balian said early Wednesday at the Yes on Schools office. “If Beverly Hills can’t do it, there’s something wrong with our society.”

“I’ll be real disappointed in a community that values cars and clothes, and not their children and education,” parent Maxine Barens said. Rona Leuin, a parent and 1967 graduate of Beverly Hills High School, tried to cheer up another parent. “It ain’t over till it’s over,” she said. “We remember Truman and Dewey, even though we weren’t alive then.”

* PRIMARY RESULTS: J8