O.C. School Districts Face Crisis of Crowded Campuses : Education: Santa Ana and Anaheim have seen enrollment soar but have no money for new buildings.

At Abraham Lincoln Elementary School in Anaheim, children spend their recess playing at a neighboring park because their own school playground is packed with temporary classrooms.

Space is so tight at Century High School in Santa Ana that two of the school’s six outdoor basketball courts and an area originally designated for an outdoor swimming pool are now crammed with portable classrooms.

The school has added 32 temporary classrooms since it opened in 1989.

“That’s an indicator of how overcrowded we are,” said Mike Vail, facilities director at the Santa Ana Unified School District. “We have this brand new high school taken over by portables because there is not enough classroom space.”

While schools throughout Orange County are becoming increasingly overcrowded as district enrollments swell to record numbers, the problem is particularly severe in the the Santa Ana and Anaheim City school districts, where officials have already exhausted most options to deal with the rapid growth.

“I think we’re just about at the end of our solutions,” said Jack Sarnicky, superintendent of the Anaheim City School District. “We’ve already turned to year-round schooling as a solution, and [to] temporary buildings. But unless we come up with other unique ways to solve our housing problems, we’re simply going to run out of space.”

School officials say they are trying to keep class size down and maintain the quality of education in their districts, but that children will ultimately suffer if they are forced to attend classes in deteriorating facilities.

“Over time, it will take a toll,” said Anaheim City Supt. Al Mijares. “The more you tax these facilities, eventually they’ll give out. We’re already at the max.”

Mijares said he believes the situation will only increase discrepancies between poor, urban school districts and more affluent ones, because the majority of students from his and other urban districts will attend class in overcrowded, overtaxed facilities.

“It’s going to perpetuate the haves and have-nots,” he said.

Unlike other fast-growing but more affluent districts such as the Capistrano and Saddleback Valley unified school districts, the Santa Ana and Anaheim districts don’t have the financial means to build new facilities.

These more affluent districts have used special, Mello-Roos tax districts in which an assessment is levied on new houses to fund the schools. But few new homes have been built in Santa Ana and Anaheim.

School districts also can’t rely on state funding for new buildings because the state is facing a multibillion backlog of school construction projects. Even those districts that have been promised state money to build new schools are having to put their projects on hold.

To deal with the space crunch, the Santa Ana and Anaheim City districts have installed hundreds of portable classrooms, shifted campus boundaries and adopted space-saving, year-round calendars at more than half of their elementary and middle school campuses. Still, there is not enough classroom space to educate all the students expected to enroll in the districts within the next few years.

* From 1990 to 1994, the Santa Ana school district’s enrollment increased 7% from about 46,000 students to 49,000. By 1999, another 5,500 students are expected to enroll in the district, according to district figures.

* In the Anaheim City district, enrollment grew 53% from 11,454 to 17,577 students from 1983 to 1994. This school year, the district is expecting about 1,000 more students.

Anaheim’s and Santa Ana’s growth is part of a pattern that is affecting districts throughout Orange County.

From 1985 to 1994, Orange County’s public school enrollment increased from about 330,000 to 404,000 students, a 22% jump. This fall, the student population is expected to increase by 7,000 more students, according to county education figures.

“Each year, the county’s kindergarten class is the largest it’s ever been,” Ours said. “The elementary schools are just exploding, which means overcrowding is going to be a long-term problem because they’re coming into the county at a young age and growing through the system.”

But while some other fast-growing districts have had to build new schools, add a few portable classrooms and convert a few schools to year-round calendars to handle their growth, Santa Ana and Anaheim City have exhausted those options.

“They’re doing everything they can to tread water, and they’re still losing,” said Bob Ours, facilities director at the Orange County Department of Education. “They’re growing so rapidly, but there’s no place to put their kids.”

The Santa Ana district has opened 10 new schools since 1989, added 450 portable classrooms and placed 24 of its 37 elementary and intermediate schools on year-round calendars.

But Vail said the district still needs to build three elementary schools, two intermediate schools and a high school to keep up with its growth. That’s in addition to the two new elementary schools and and major additions to Santa Ana High School already in the works.

Maria Elena Romero, director of the Anaheim City School District’s fiscal services department, said the district needs to build at least five more elementary schools. But there is only money for one school: its old administrative offices will be converted into an elementary campus.

To deal with the space crunch, the Anaheim district has placed 15 of its 21 schools on year-round schedules, shifted school boundaries to take some of the load off the most populated schools and added 58 portable classrooms--oftentimes in areas once reserved for playground space.

“At this point our school is huge,” said Ruth Sorensen, principal at the 1,000-student Lincoln Elementary School. “When the first three relocatable classrooms were added on the playground, everyone thought that would take care of the school for good. But we’ve since had to add three more portables, which takes up a lot of space on the playground.”

The school has also had to create two lunch periods to deal with its large number of students.

“We’re now close to our maximum, even with our year-round calendar,” Sorensen said. “But for us, it’s just a matter of making adjustments.”

While much of the growth in south Orange County is due to the construction of new housing, Anaheim and Santa Ana schools are growing for other reasons.

Romero said families with young children are moving into the homes of retirees, and that large families or two sets of families are moving into one house.

As a result, Santa Ana and Anaheim don’t have the same opportunities to create Mello-Roos taxing districts, which allow local governments, in cooperation with developers, to tax future property owners for roads, schools and other needed facilities on undeveloped land.

The Saddleback Valley, Capistrano, Irvine, Orange, Los Alamitos, Newport-Mesa and Tustin unified school districts have all established Mello-Roos districts in their communities to build new schools.

“Districts where there is housing growth can use funds from developers,” Ours said. “In the Capistrano or Saddleback Valley school districts, for instance, they can negotiate with developers who are building hundreds of homes. But no one’s building anything in Anaheim or Santa Ana.”

One of the few sources of funding for the Anaheim City and Santa Ana districts has been state school construction money. But California voters in June, 1994, rejected a bond measure that would have devoted $1 billion to new school construction and renovation projects.

As a result, the state doesn’t have the money to fund any school projects.

Efforts are underway to place another school bond measure on the ballot next year, but state lawmakers have not yet passed a school bond bill.

And even if the state eventually is able to start funding new projects, districts like Santa Ana and Anaheim are at a disadvantage because the state gives priority to districts that are able to come up with half of their construction funds. Most districts accumulate such revenue by striking deals with new housing developers.

“Funding has just not come through,” Romero said. “And if you don’t have any major development, how can you create a Mello-Roos?”

Districts can hold their own Mello-Roos bond elections to raise needed capital for various school construction projects. But because a two-thirds majority vote is needed, the option is at best a long shot.

“Orange County voters have not been supportive of any bond issues in a long, long time,” Ours said. “I don’t think this community is aware of the facility problems at the schools.”

But Mijares said the Santa Ana school district may have no choice but to attempt its own bond election. A school finance committee is now studying the possibility, he said.

“It’s yet to be seen whether the community will tax themselves,” Mijares said. “People are aware of the problems, but they’re not aware of the urgency. We’ve so far been able to accommodate students who arrive at our schools, so the public then thinks everything is OK.”

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Crowded Classes

The problem of school overcrowding is felt particularly hard in the Santa Ana Unified and Anaheim City districts, which have grown 35% and 44%, respectively, during the previous decade. School enrollment, in thousands: SANTA ANA UNIFIED ‘94-’95: 48,858 ANAHEIM CITY ‘94-’95 17,577 Source: School districts

Researched by DIANE SEO / Los Angeles Times