Vista School District Delays Bond Measure : Election: Supporters feel frustrated by the two-thirds majority vote required for passage. They hope for legislative help.

With little discussion, the Vista Unified School District board voted unanimously to postpone a $63-million bond measure that had been scheduled for the November ballot.

The board’s decision was a reversal of its position in January when it voted to go ahead with the bond measure to construct as many as 11 new schools over the next five years. It comes while action is pending in the Legislature to make it possible for a simple majority to pass bond measures, and on the heels of the demise of a similar bond measure in Fallbrook.

Voters in both the Vista Unified and Fallbrook Union High school districts, two of the most overcrowded in San Diego County, repeatedly have rejected bonds to build new schools.

The most recent defeat came June 5 when a $35-million bond in Fallbrook fell 120 votes shy of the two-thirds majority it needed to pass.

Voters in the Vista district have defeated two November ballot attempts in as many years, the last one garnering just over 61% of the votes in 1989.

“There has been no groundswell of community leadership to be able to have already begun the planning stages of the bond campaign,” said Keith Grauman of the Vista Teachers Assn. “That caused me and others to be very concerned about the possibility of success in November.”

Although support for the bond has not diminished, the enthusiasm behind it has. Many are frustrated with the burden of trying to gain a two-thirds majority in an election, something that has been done just once in North County since 1978, on a Fallbrook Union School District measure last year.

“We’re frustrated, but not to the point of giving up,” said Tamara Drean, president of the Vista Teachers Assn. “Everybody is just taking a deep breath. We can’t give up. We don’t have the choice to give up.”

Supporters of the bond measure look to the Legislature for relief from that burden.

A state constitutional amendment sponsored by Sen. Bill Leonard (R-Redlands) would make it possible for a simple majority to pass bond measures sponsored by a school district or government. The proposal, which must be approved by both the Senate and Assembly by next Thursday to be placed on the November ballot, also would limit the amount and length of the bond measure.

Leonard’s proposal, which passed the Senate 32 to 0 on June 14, faces opposition from Republicans in the Assembly who feel a simple majority would be too easy to reach; they prefer a 60% threshold, according to a Leonard aide.

Vista Unified officials hope such an amendment will go to the polls in November, making a Vista bond measure in June more likely to succeed.

“I think we can wait the six or eight months,” said board member James Hagar. “If we can then pass the bond, then I think we could still build the school before we got to year-round or double sessions for high schools, too.”

Elementary and middle schools in the district already are scheduled to go year-round beginning July 2, a temporary solution that is expected to put off a crisis for two to three years.

“People recognize that there has been a lot of planning for year-round and they think that that will take care of it,” Grauman said. “They don’t realize that year-round is just a temporary expedient.”

“There is a bulge of students going through the system, and within three or four years they’ll be going through the high schools.”

Grauman warned that if more funding is not forthcoming, double sessions of schools, in which two separate loads of students attend the same school, may be on the horizon.

The district also is looking at the Mello-Roos plan: forcing people buying new homes in the district to pay fees that would go toward building new schools.

The Fallbrook Union High School District decided Wednesday to make another bond attempt in November.

“The need is not going away,” said Supt. and Principal Robert Thomas. “Our school was originally designed for 1,200 students. We’ve redesigned as much as we can for 1,800 students, but we’re already up to 2,200 kids.”

“We’ve got 15 relocatable (classrooms) already in place, and we’re putting in eight more in the summer,” Thomas said.

The district already owns the property to build a new high school, a plot on Gird Road, and if the bond does not pass in November, the district may place relocatable classrooms on the site and move the ninth-graders in, Thomas said.

“Once you put relocatables on a site, though, you tend to build around them,” Thomas said.

Thomas also warned that the longer they wait to construct the new high school, the more it will cost as construction rates rise. Already, the November bond request will be $2 million more than the one voters shot down three weeks ago.

The new school would be designed to hold 2,400 students and would be completed by September, 1994, if the bond measure passed in November. Thomas said that even if there were no growth in Fallbrook through the end of the century, there would still be a need for the new high school.

“When the current kindergarten kids reach high school, without any new students moving into the district, we’ll have 3,600 kids,” he said.

While enthusiasm for the November bond attempt is high, Thomas fears that if it fails, the frustration felt by those behind the Vista bond attempts will spread to Fallbrook.

“You ask yourself, should we go in November, while we have a lot of enthusiasm, or are people worn out, and so you wait a while,” Thomas said. “But I think we have an obligation to go for it. The need is there and the costs are going up.”