ELECTIONS / CASTAIC UNION SCHOOL DISTRICT : Voters Asked to OK $20-Million Measure : The proposition would pay for a middle and an elementary campus. There is no organized opposition.

Voters in the Castaic Union School District will go to the polls Tuesday to decide on a $20-million bond measure to build a middle school and an elementary school.

Supporters cite the district’s sole middle school, which is composed entirely of portable classrooms and shares the lot of an existing elementary school, as justification for the new tax.

“We have just really run out of room, and the portables are not the greatest,” school board member Gloria Mercado said. “Children are on top of each other and crowded in.”

If the bond wins the required two-thirds voter approval, $14 million of the bond will go toward building a permanent middle school in the Villa Canyon area of Castaic by fall, 1995, and the temporary middle school will shut down, said Supt. Scott Brown.

The remaining $6 million of the bond would go toward building an elementary school next to the new middle school, Brown said, although it is unclear when it would be built.

Sites for both schools have been identified, Brown said, but only the middle school site has been purchased.

The bond money for the elementary school, officials said, is needed primarily for anticipated growth in the district, and the school will be built when that growth is realized.

The existing Castaic and Live Oak elementary schools each hold about 600 students, school officials said, but enrollment is expected to soar as development in the area picks up after the recession.

The bond, if passed, would tax homeowners $32.56 per $100,000 of assessed value. Brown said the average Castaic homeowner would pay $39 a year.

The history of fund-raising school elections in the Santa Clarita Valley has been dismal at best, with only one district succeeding since the 1978 passage of Proposition 13. Generally, the onerous burden of having to win a two-thirds vote instead of a simple majority has killed such initiatives.

“Achieving that 66 2/3% is not an easy thing to do,” Brown said, “and we’re optimistic and hopeful, but we’ve seen school districts fall short.”

Most recently in the Santa Clarita Valley, the Newhall School District failed to pass its own $20-million general obligation bond measure in November, 1991, receiving 56.1% of the vote.

But Brown said he remains optimistic, because the new middle school would be the district’s only middle school and thus would not divide the district politically.

“Every student will ultimately attend this school,” Brown said. “We’re not in the bind that some districts are in by asking, say, the people on the north side to pay for a school on the south side.”

The campaign for the bond issue has been a quiet one. While the teachers union has taken out advertisements in the local newspaper in support of Proposition S, Dirk Gosda of Castaic Citizens for Castaic Schools said the bulk of the efforts have been door-to-door by a cadre of about 60 volunteers.

“We just felt like it was a very local issue,” Gosda said, “and the best way to address that was to organize and talk quietly among our neighbors and friends and people who would vote.”

A new middle school, supporters emphasize, would benefit households without children by raising property values.

No organized opposition to the bond measure has emerged, allowing the campaign to stay quiet. No argument against the proposition was filed with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder for the sample ballot.

NEXT STEP

Voters in Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Hidden Hills and Westlake Village are eligible to cast ballots in Tuesday’s special election. Polls will be open between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. Precinct information and poll locations should have been printed on sample ballots mailed in early February. But voters with questions or in need of directions can call the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters at (213) 727-1900.