L.A. Schools Focus Hopes on Local Bond

The failure of the Legislature to ratify a proposal that would have set aside as much as $300 million to build and repair campuses in Los Angeles means the state’s largest school district is counting more heavily than ever on the support of local voters.

The district, which is expecting a record enrollment of nearly 660,000 students this fall, will ask voters in November to approve a $2.4-billion local bond to build new schools, repair and renovate old campuses, wire classrooms for computers, and conduct seismic strengthening. The money also would help the district create enough space to participate in the statewide push to reduce class size to 20 students per teacher in primary grades.

“The absence of a state bond means the whole show is in our backyard,” said Jeff Horton, president of the Los Angeles Board of Education. “If we don’t pass [the local bond], we will have no money for facilities for a long, long time.”

District officials had hoped that state bond funds would be available to match at least some of the money raised locally. And some local Democratic legislators had led an effort in Sacramento to ensure that whatever bond proposal the Legislature passed would guarantee a share for Los Angeles.

But that effort foundered in the final hours of the legislative session Saturday, amid partisan differences over how the state finances new school construction.

The local bond measure would need approval by more than two-thirds of the voters. It will be the first time a local bond has appeared on the ballot for Los Angeles schools since Proposition 13 made it more difficult to pass tax measures by raising the margin required for approval from a simple majority.

The bond would pay for projects big and small: From renovating an auditorium at Elysian Heights Elementary, built in 1917, to $326 million worth of rewiring to prepare for installation of computer networks throughout the district. From resurfacing the playground at Catskill Elementary in the South Bay, to providing $200 million for portable classrooms, student lunch shelters and air-conditioning in hot areas of the district, such as the San Fernando Valley.

A list of projects to be funded at each school was sent to local campuses by the district last week, to generate community support for passage of the bond.

Such local bonds were a key element of the political wrangling that ultimately killed several proposals for a statewide bond in Sacramento.

Republicans, led in the Assembly by Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga), had sought to overhaul the state’s school construction finance process to put greater emphasis on local bonds.

Brulte said Tuesday that many school districts were not paying their fair share of school construction costs and were relying too heavily on state bond funds and special fees imposed on new home buyers.

Those fees--set by local districts--can add $25,000 or more to the cost of a home over the life of a 30-year loan, Brulte said. In addition, the financing of school construction has undergone a historic shift, as the state has come to assume a bigger portion of the burden, he said.

Education groups had urged the Legislature to act quickly to authorize a state bond, without dealing with the broader financing issues. But Brulte said the Republicans forced the issue, dashing hopes of getting enough votes to pass a bond measure.

The Legislature did approve a plan to sell as much as $400 million a year in revenue bonds to pay for school construction annually for the next 10 years. But that pales in comparison to the $17 billion that experts say the state needs to accommodate growing enrollment and repair crumbling campuses--even without taking into account the additional 60,000 classrooms needed to reduce class sizes.