Voter Deja Vu: Parcel Tax Is Back on Ballot : Education: The levy will be put to a vote for the third time Tuesday. Last year, the bid failed by four votes. Money would go to the financially strapped school district.

Beverly Hills schools face a familiar test next week, when voters will decide for a third time whether to tax themselves on behalf of the financially strapped school district.

A proposed parcel tax last year fell short by just four votes of the needed two-thirds for passage. Another similar measure failed in 1987. Arguments for this year’s measure, Proposition A, echo the arguments made for the previous measures.

This time, however, the pro-tax campaign has been quieter--and much cheaper.

“We really feel the Beverly Hills voter is well aware of the need for the parcel tax. We haven’t had to spend the money to educate them,” said parent Anneli Roth, co-coordinator of the Yes on Schools Committee. The committee will spend $40,000 to $60,000, compared to $157,000 that was spent last year, and it has not launched the all-out rallies and marches that distinguished the last campaign.

Although not as visible this year, proponents say the tax is needed because the budget crisis in the Beverly Hills Unified School District has worsened. After the failure of last year’s tax, the district was forced to lay off 41 teachers and dozens of other employees and to slash $2.5 million in expenses to bring this year’s budget to $28.6 million.

According to committee chairman and City Councilman Robert K. Tanenbaum, 103 teachers and $7 million have been axed during the last five years. The city gives about $5 million a year to the district for the use of school facilities, and a nonprofit foundation raises about $350,000 a year for the schools.

“If (the tax) were not a last resort, I would not be in favor of it,” Tanenbaum said.

District officials project a $1.26-million deficit for the coming school year.

The levy would bring in about $4.3 million annually for five years. If approved by two-thirds of the voters, parcels of land in the city would be assessed as follows:

* Condominium owners: $250 per unit.

* Single-family parcels: $350 to $650, depending on the size of the lot.

* Multiple-family residential properties: under four units, $450; four to eight units, $600: and nine or more units, $750.

* Commercial properties: $650 or $750, depending on the square footage.

Tax supporters this month dropped a lawsuit challenging the narrow failure of last year’s measure, to reassure voters that they could not be taxed twice. The anti-tax campaign contended that if this year’s measure won and the lawsuit also prevailed, property owners would be taxed doubly, a charge that school district officials denied.

Tax opponents again are charging that the district’s financial woes are the result of fiscal irresponsibility. They say Beverly Hills spends more per student than any other unified district in Los Angeles County, but student test scores here are matched or bettered by pupils in other districts.

“Money doesn’t grow on trees,” nor does it buy education, said Sherman Kulick, chairman of the Citizens for Cost-Effective Quality Education.

The anti-tax group has received more than $3,000 in contributions, Kulick said. The bulk of its supporters are longtime residents who don’t have children in the schools and, he contends, “tend to be more objective as to how the school system is performing.”

Other demographics also tip the scales in the tax opponents’ favor. Many parents who might support the tax are recent immigrants and not yet eligible to vote. And most of the district’s teachers, unable to afford housing in Beverly Hills, live outside the district.

Kulick said employee salaries should be frozen, administrators cut, and the district budget overhauled. He argues that there should be more teacher accountability for performance and that parents must motivate their children to learn.

“I urge people to look at this thing objectively, not emotionally. My key question is, ‘Are we getting our money’s worth?’ ” he said.

But tax supporters, who have the endorsement of the City Council, Chamber of Commerce, Real Estate Board, and the teachers, police and firefighters unions, say that Beverly Hills has long been a lighthouse district. They vow to battle to stave off the budget and program cuts that other districts have had to make.

“Just because it had to happen in another district, does that make it right?” said Judie Fenton, co-coordinator of the Yes on Schools Committee, who is married to school board member Frank Fenton. “I’ll fight to give my kids the best possible opportunities.”

The proponents say other school systems have been forced into bankruptcy or are turning to parcel taxes.

Other districts with parcel tax elections on Tuesday include La Canada and San Marino. Culver City voters will decide on a parcel tax in November, and Santa Monica-Malibu voters have twice approved a parcel tax. Of the 104 school district parcel tax elections in California since 1983, 40 have succeeded.

Beverly Hills, though, is in a select group. Only a handful of districts have tried more than twice to pass a school parcel tax. In the Lake Tahoe area’s Tahoe-Truckee Unified School District, four parcel tax measures were put to voters before one finally passed in 1989, and in Marin County’s Kentfield Elementary School District, two levies passed after the first measure lost narrowly. In the San Marino Unified School District, next week’s election is a third attempt after two failures.

“I hope the third time’s the charm,” Fenton said.

Tanenbaum says the election will decide the fate of public schooling. “We stand at Armageddon right now with respect to public school as an educational option.”