$1-Million Gift Jump-Starts School Fund-Raiser : Endowment: Irvine Co. writes seven-figure check for computers and reference works as Irvine district opens drive to win $25 million in donations over next decade.

Elementary and high school students here will see more computers in the classroom and university-level, high-tech reference materials in libraries through an endowment fund started Tuesday with a $1-million gift from the Irvine Co.

In a ceremony at Springbrook Elementary School, Carol Hoffman, an Irvine Co. vice president, handed a $1-million check to Irvine Unified School District board President Helen Cameron and pledged another $2 million in the coming years if Irvine Co. projects are approved and built.

The gift kicked off a fund-raising drive the district hopes will bring in $25 million in donations over the next 10 years. In September, the district began planning an ambitious search for corporate and private donors to help reach the $25-million endowment goal, Cameron said.

It is the first time the district has set up an endowment fund to supplement state money. The district’s next step is to talk to professional fund-raisers and other institutions involved in fund raising, such as UC Irvine’s university advancement office, and plan ways to seek further donations, Cameron said.

“It represents a new direction for all of us,” she said.

If the endowment reaches its $25-million goal, the district would earn an estimated $2.5 million a year in interest, which would be used to counter the effects of dwindling state education funding, Cameron said.

State funding shortfalls no longer allow the district to provide the kind of classroom instruction parents expect from the Irvine schools, she said.

Priority for the funding will be to equip more classrooms with computers and to train teachers in how to use the equipment to improve instruction, district Supt. David E. Brown said. In libraries, Brown said, the district hopes to add interactive video and CD-ROM technology to give students access to encyclopedia-like information that combines words, pictures and sounds to make the information come alive.

New technology also will allow science students to electronically perform experiments that otherwise would be too dangerous to conduct in the classroom, Brown said.

The Irvine Co. has committed itself to helping the school district seek the remaining $22 million for the endowment fund, Hoffman said. In the coming years, the company also might be able to pledge more money toward it, she said.

The other $2 million pledged by the company will be granted if development projects in Irvine now in the planning stages receive city approval and are constructed, Hoffman said. Those projects include the 3,850-home Westpark II project, the 2,885-home Northwood 5 plan, additional homes in the current Westpark Village and future development planned in southeast Irvine, she said.

Delays in those projects will delay delivery of the $2 million in gifts, she said.

The Westpark II project received city approval last December but faces a voter referendum on the Nov. 5 ballot. If voters reject the project, the company would have to wait at least a year before bringing a similar plan back to the city for approval. Members of the Irvine City Council also said they might reject the Northwood 5 plan if residents vote against Westpark II.

The Irvine Co. has been criticized by some detractors for tying the pledged $2 million to the developments, Hoffman said. But the company is less able to give large gifts when its own financial health is suffering, she said.

Announcing the endowment donations just before the Nov. 5 election was not timed by the Irvine Co., Hoffman said. The school district asked the Irvine Co. to help kick off the endowment fund by making a donation and the company didn’t want politics to force a delay, she said.