ELECTIONS / OXNARD UNION HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT : Voters Reject $45-Million Bond Measure

A $45-million bond measure that would have eased classroom crowding in the Oxnard Union High School District by building a seventh high school was rejected by voters in a special election Tuesday.

With 74% of the precincts reporting, only 56% of voters supported the bond measure, which requires approval of two-thirds of the voters to pass. About 44% of the recession-wary voters opposed Measure O, which would have increased property taxes.

The defeat came as devastating news to district officials, who gambled $100,000 on the cost of a special election in hopes of attracting more supporters than opponents.

“We’re extremely disappointed. I thought we did our homework,” said Ian Kirkpatrick, superintendent of the sprawling district. “The chance of us building a new school in the next five or six years is practically nonexistent.”

Kirkpatrick said he had no regrets for spending four times as much on a single-issue election than if he had waited for the June or November ballots.

“This had to be the election,” Kirkpatrick said.

In addition to spending $100,000 on the special election, he noted that the school district is committed to paying $850,000 a year on a loan to purchase a 50-acre site.

Anticipating passage of the bond measure, school officials have already begun eminent domain proceedings to seize the land on Gonzales Avenue between Oxnard Boulevard and Rose Avenue for the new 2,250-student high school. Officials had hoped to complete the campus in time for the 1994-95 school year.

Without a seventh high school, officials said they would be forced to consider other means of reducing classroom crowding in the district’s other high schools. Those proposals include doubling the number of portable classrooms, or moving to double sessions or year-round instruction.

Kirkpatrick said first options will be buying more portable classrooms and possibly transferring students between schools to even out enrollment.

As expected, voter turnout was light in the district, which encompasses Oxnard, Camarillo, Port Hueneme and Somis. Nearly a third of the county’s registered voters--about 97,700 people--could have cast ballots in the special election.

Jeannette Jennett, who coordinated the Measure O campaign, blamed the defeat on “misinformation from an opponent” who spread leaflets that confused the proposed relocation of Oxnard High School with construction of a new school needed to relieve crowding.

But an informal survey of voters in Oxnard showed that some voters were concerned about a tax increase during a recession. Each homeowner would have been assessed an annual average of $7.75 per $100,000 of assessed value during the bond’s 25-year life.

“I don’t want to spend any more money,” said Cecile Faulconer, a 38-year-old mother of six children. “Things are bad enough right now without more taxes.”

Other voters disputed the need for a new high school.

“We think that money should be used to better the facilities that we have now,” said Rosemarie Castro, who joined her husband in voting against the measure.

Dr. Eugene J. Messer, 61, did not want a high school destroying the open area near his house. “I don’t think this is the place to put a high school--in the area of very nice homes,” he said.

But supporters said they did not mind paying to relieve crowding in the six high schools, which were designed to accommodate 10,600 students and now have 11,743. Enrollment is projected to increase.

Susan Baier, a French teacher at Channel Islands High School for 21 years, said her school’s crowding problem is worse than at the other schools.

“We don’t have room in the cafeteria for all of them,” she said. “We don’t have enough restroom facilities.”

Science classes are taught in portable classrooms with no lab space, and some teachers travel from room to room throughout the day, she said.

If people with families move into the district, Baier said they should agree to pay to build schools for their children. “They have to be willing to provide educational facilities,” she said. “They don’t just happen.”

The odds for Measure O’s passage were stacked against the district.

In November, voters approved only 28% of the 19 bond measures and 18 special tax questions for schools statewide, said Howard Hamilton, associate superintendent of the Pleasant Valley School District in Camarillo.

In two separate bond elections last year, Camarillo voters rejected measures for $75 million and $55 million for school construction and renovation.