School District Asks Exemption on Building Fund Rules

While neighboring school districts convert to year-round calendars to position themselves to receive state construction money, Valley Center Union school district’s superintendent will appeal today to a state board to grant his district an exception to the funding rules.

The head of the 2,400-student district hopes to impress on the state allocation board that the added cost of year-round education will overburden his district, a contention state officials deny.

Valley Center Union is only the third district in the state to ask the board for a waiver from the year-round education condition in the state construction program for new schools. The other two school districts, both in Northern California, lost their appeals.

“The state is saying that the idea is that you save money by going on year-round since you’re using your facilities more. On the short term, that is true, but in the long term, it’s costing more money for busing, more money for electricity and more money for administration,” Supt. Jeff Mulford said.

Mulford said nearly all Valley Center students are bused to school at one time or another during the year, and the district’s busing expenses, which currently run about $500,000 a year, would balloon to more than $650,000 if year-round education were enacted.

But state officials, who have twice denied Valley Center’s request for a waiver, said the district’s circumstances are not that unusual and do not warrant an exemption.

Granting such a waiver would “open the floodgates to everyone that just doesn’t want” to go on year-round education, said Duwayne Brooks, state assistant superintendent for school facilities planning.

“It’s not fair to those school districts that have bitten the bullet and have made the hard choices and went on a year-round calendar,” said Brooks, explaining that the criteria for granting waivers is “fairly restrictive.”

Brooks said Valley Center could reduce the number of buses by four or five if the district went on a year-round schedule, saving money in bus driver salaries and maintenance.

Escondido Union and San Marcos Unified school districts have both voted to place their schools on year-round, multitrack calendars in the last two months in efforts to ease over-crowding and gain priority in the building program.

While no school district is required to go on a year-round calendar, the move is necessary to be eligible for the full amount of school building funds possible from the state. Year-round education expands the capacity of a school by having a portion of students and teachers on vacation at all times, thus delaying the need for constructing new schools.

Valley Center Union wants to build a $12-million middle school at Lake Wohlford and Valley Center roads and hopes to get $6 million of that from the state. Under the current rules, the school district could lose $2.4 million in state funds if it chose not to go on a year-round calendar.

Districts that do not have enough students to provide four classes in each grade level are automatically exempt from the year-round education condition. In San Diego County, these districts include Dehesa, Julian Union, Julian Union High and Pauma.

The Jamul-Dulzura Union school district is one of a handful in the state that has been granted a waiver from year-round education under a special method of calculating enrollment that discounts students in isolated areas.

“It would have been a nasty thing for us and hurt our programs,” said Jamul-Dulzura Supt. Thomas Bishop, who lobbied for most of last year and had been rejected by the state twice before receiving the exemption.

Assemblyman Steve Peace, a South Bay Democrat, has sponsored a bill that would automatically grant waivers from the year-round education requirement to districts having 20 or fewer students per square mile and those located in very hot climates. Under the proposed legislation, which will go before the Assembly Education Committee in April, Alpine and Bonsall, as well as Jamul-Dulzura and Valley Center, would receive waivers.