Voters Thanked on Eve of School’s Dedication : Oxnard: Administrators praise support for the 1988 bond measure. Other districts have not fared as well.

With the dedication today of the Emilie Ritchen Elementary School in north Oxnard, the Oxnard School District has accomplished what few others have been able to in recent years.

Administrators and teachers in the ethnically diverse district were able to persuade voters to pay for the $8-million school out of their own pockets.

In 1988, district residents voted in overwhelming numbers (72%) for a $40-million bond measure to pay for up to four new schools needed to serve the Oxnard district’s growing enrollment. The other schools are planned to be built by the end of the decade.

The Emilie Ritchen School--named for Oxnard’s former head librarian who read stories to students--will accommodate nearly 1,200 students in a year-round schedule. It is located at 2200 Cabrillo Way in the northwest part of the city and will hold its first classes this fall.

Supt. Norman R. Brekke attributed the bond measure’s success to voter recognition that the district was already doing everything possible to respond to Oxnard’s growing population. “The voters have been enormously supportive of its schools,” Brekke said.

By contrast, administrators in other Ventura County districts have been frustrated by a series of defeats that voters have handed them in rejecting similar bond measures to expand and renovate old schools or build new ones.

Across the state this year, voters have approved just 20 of 54 bond measures--barely one third--placed on the ballot by local school districts, according to Political Designs, a San Ramon-based consulting firm.

School districts in Ventura County have fared little better.

In Camarillo, where voters turned down two bond measures in less than a six-month period last year, school officials blame the weak economy and neighborhood rivalries.

“It’s difficult in this type of economy for people to tax themselves,” said Sherry Cole, district office coordinator for the Pleasant Valley Elementary School District in Camarillo.

In November, voters narrowly defeated Pleasant Valley’s Measure H, a $55-million proposition that would have paid for a new school and renovation of a number of others. The defeat followed the voters’ rejection of the $75-million Measure G five months earlier. Measure G would have paid for two new schools and renovations to other district schools.

After the most recent defeat, Pleasant Valley trustees decided not to appeal to voters again until at least 1993, Cole said.

Robert Brown, the business manager for the Oxnard Union High School District, blamed a disinformation campaign by community activists for the defeat in April of the district’s $45-million Measure O.

“We had some active members of the community who campaigned against the bond either from ignorance or misinformation,” Brown said. The opponents’ principal mistake, he said, was to tell voters the money was to be spent on the relocation of Oxnard High School.

Instead, the money was needed to build a high school in the northeast area of Oxnard, Brown said. Funds for the relocation of Oxnard High School have been promised by state education officials, he said.

“It was an unexpected and a real emotional defeat for a lot of people who worked very hard,” Brown said. He added that the district’s trustees are reluctant to press ahead with another campaign.

“There is no thought at this time of placing another bond measure on the ballot,” Brown said.

Administrators in other districts have also found the climate for bond measures cloudy at best.

In the Simi Valley Unified School District, voters rejected a $35-million bond measure in 1988 by a narrow margin before approving a nearly identical measure a year later. According to district business manager Mary Beth Wolford, success followed an extensive campaign to better inform voters about the need to renovate the district’s schools.

For officials in the Fillmore Unified School District, the advice of a citizens advisory committee in 1987 is credited with the successful passage of a $5-million bond measure.

Administrators initially believed they needed $10 million to build a new school, but the advisory board said voters would not approve a bond measure of that size, said Robert Kernen, the district’s business manager.

After the $5-million bond measure passed--enough to buy the school site--the district returned two years later with an $8-million measure for construction of the school. But voters rejected the second measure, with less than half favoring it, Kernen said. A two-thirds vote is required to approve a bond measure.

Fillmore administrators are still unsure what accounted for the shift in voter sentiments, Kernen said. “No one has quite figured out the true reason.”

Ginny Linton, an Oxnard resident who campaigned for the Oxnard district’s successful bond measure, credited volunteers who knocked on doors and phoned voters for the victory.

“Lack of information was the main problem,” she recalled. “We went out of our way to bridge the communication gap.”