District Sues Corona to Boost Funds for Schools : Education: Officials say the city is approving new homes without requiring developers to pay for building more classrooms.

Some school campuses here have so many portable classrooms that additional ones would have to take the place of playgrounds.

At another site, teachers without a permanent home wheel carts loaded with lesson plans from classroom to classroom. Elsewhere, a new elementary school that opened in January is already well beyond its intended capacity.

Corona’s lack of school space is not much different from any other district in western Riverside County, among the fastest-growing areas in the state. After grappling for years to find creative solutions to fund construction of schools, the Corona-Norco Unified School District has seized an opportunity and taken a hard-line approach to the problem.

It is suing the city.

In a move that took city officials, developers and home builders by surprise, the district last week filed lawsuits charging that in the past two months, the City Council approved seven construction projects without demanding that their developers fully fund the cost of new school facilities.

“Even in this depressed economy, we still picked up 1,200 (additional) students this year,” said Bill Hedrick, a school board trustee. “When the economy gets better, what is (the annual student population increase) going to be? Two thousand? Three thousand? If we don’t build and pay as we go, there will be a terrible price for everyone to pay later.”

District officials filed the suits on Nov. 1 to meet a state deadline that gives opponents 30 days to file challenges after a City Council approves a development project.

Ironically, the suit could also affect the district’s superintendent, Don Helms, a landowner who has a small project pending before the City Council. If his proposal to subdivide his citrus grove for more housing moves forward, he faces the prospect of being sued by his own district.

Since September, district lawyers have filed letters opposing at least seven developments that the City Council has approved, including the 973-acre Mission Crest project, which could add 3,200 homes.

“We’ve got to ask ourselves (about) the fairness of assuming that 100% of new schools should be paid by new home buyers,” said attorney Dave Saunders. He represents landowners in south Corona, the next big boom area, where 12,500 homes are planned. “There’s an inequity in that.”

School officials argue that while the district has so far been able to handle the influx, the situation will be unbearable if nothing is done by the turn of the century, when the district’s enrollment could be 40,000, compared to nearly 23,000 this year.

District planners say that they have little money to meet those needs. The district estimates that during the next decade, it will need three more high schools, two intermediate schools and 10 elementary schools, at a cost of $303 million.

Since 1986, the district has relied on developers’ fees and state funding to pay a share of construction costs for facilities. But the state’s construction funds are depleted, forcing the district to rely increasingly on developers’ fees.

The fees “don’t even come close to paying the rent on our portable classrooms,” said Sherry Gongaware, the district’s facilities planner. The district is leasing 232 portable classrooms this year for more than $1 million. Of that, developers have paid only $168,000 because of a slowdown in housing starts, she said.

Under a recent state Court of Appeal ruling, city or county planners may deny certain construction projects if they believe they would overburden public schools. That gave districts an opening to seek more money from developers.

In Corona, district officials say they collect $2,500 per average-size dwelling unit to pay for school construction, while the actual cost to buy land and build a school is about $15,000 per dwelling unit. Developers say that if they had to pay the higher rates, they would have to pass much of it on to the purchaser.

“It’s just not possible to shift this all on the home buyers,” said Robert Henniger, vice president of Foothill Properties, which owns a large share of south Corona property. “People buying homes now are really stretching it.”

Developers argue that student population growth cannot be attributed solely to new homes because the population has also increased as families move into old homes or double up in one unit, Henniger said.

District officials argue that this is irrelevant, considering what could happen if the economy gets better and development takes off.

“The vast majority of the growth that is occurring is in the new areas,” Hedrick said. “We are talking about the difference between 200 students (in an old neighborhood) versus 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 in a new development.”

The dispute has put the district’s superintendent in the unusual position of supporting the district’s push for increased developer fees while facing the possibility of paying legal costs if the district sues the city over his project.

Helms said that because of the potential conflict of interest, he has taken himself out of district discussions over the lawsuits.

“As a school administrator, I would have to agree with my colleagues that we have to go after whatever means of funding are possible,” Helms said. But as a private citizen, he takes a different tack. Helms says the public as a whole should bear the responsibility for school construction, such as funding schools through a city or statewide bond measure. “Education is the responsibility of everyone,” Helms said.