Backers of School Repair Bond Take to the Streets

Learning a lesson from their razor-thin loss in last year’s election, backers of a bond measure to repair Los Angeles schools took their campaign straight to the neighborhoods Saturday in a last-minute scramble to get out the vote for Tuesday’s balloting.

Bolstered by a flurry of television commercials, supporters of the $2.4-billion measure held rallies at four schools and called on likely backers in a grass-roots approach not undertaken in November, when the measure narrowly failed to get the two-thirds majority needed for passage.

In upscale Hancock Park, about 100 parents, teachers and students gathered in front of John Burroughs Middle School before trooping into the surrounding community, armed with lists of likely supporters and leaflets extolling Proposition BB.

“Our success hinges on a strong voter turnout,” said campaign spokesman Erik Nasarenko. “Last time, we ran the campaign centrally from a high-rise. This time we’re in the field, phone-banking and doing the precinct walking.”

The reception seemed friendly among the stately homes around Burroughs School, where parent leader Cindi du Bois went door to door with a gaggle of youthful campaigners, who were on bicycle and sneakered foot. In the first two blocks, seven voters promised support to the youngsters; one said he would vote no.

The aging Burroughs Middle School, a brick facility known locally as “JB,” would receive $2.5 million from the bond to fix a leaky roof, improve air conditioning and restore the auditorium, boosters said.

“We do everything we can to keep it clean and safe. But it’s eroding. It’s old,” Principal Earl Barner said after the brief rally at the school.

The measure, which lost last time by a single percentage point, has support from the city’s political establishment, with endorsements from both mayoral candidates--incumbent Richard Riordan, a Republican, and challenger Tom Hayden, a Democratic state senator--plus 13 members of the City Council. In an effort to woo conservatives, campaign mailers have highlighted Riordan’s support and a promise to place a member of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. on the committee that will oversee spending.

Backers have also unleashed a $134,000 blitz in 11th-hour television advertising, abandoning the failed campaign’s strategy of relying on radio commercials.

Nasarenko said the measure is expected to rise or fall depending on voter turnout.

A recent Times poll found that it would probably fall short of the needed two-thirds margin in a low-turnout election. Turnout tends to dip in off-year elections, such as this one, and measure supporters worry that voters will shy away because polling shows lopsided races for mayor and city attorney.

Opposition to the school bond bloomed late in the campaign. A group favoring a move to split San Fernando Valley schools from the Los Angeles Unified School District said the measure might hinder their efforts because it would deplete the property tax base for future bonds for a new Valley district.

Opponents of the measure, led by Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Granada Hills) and Valley business and community leaders, also said there are enough public funds to fix ailing schools already.

But at the Burroughs Middle School rally, bond supporters said the need for repair money is dire. Assembly Majority Leader Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), a former teachers union organizer, said schools deserve the same consideration as jails, such as the county’s newly opened Twin Towers, when it comes to construction projects.

“If our schools were prisons, they’d be state-of-the-art,” Villaraigosa told the crowd. “We don’t have a school that we can compare to Twin Towers.”