School District Tenants Pressed for Space

Almost as soon as Gov. Pete Wilson announced his program to put fewer students into more classrooms, school administrators across the county began activating escape clauses written into the leases of their abandoned school buildings.

Junior highs and elementary schools that had been rented out during the enrollment slump of the 1970s and ‘80s suddenly were hot property. The districts also were coping with a burst of new housing development and a rising student tide called “the Echo Boom,” named for the children of the post-World War II Baby Boom.

With California expecting another 2 million kids to be attending its schools over the next five to 10 years, reclamation of school space is suddenly becoming a growth industry.

As schools sent out eviction letters, soup kitchens, adult education programs, private schools and badly needed day-care centers were thrown into a near panic. The administration of one school district is even contemplating evicting itself from a former elementary school site.

Earlier this month, the nonprofit Waldorf School of Orange County decided to fight back and filed suit against Newport-Mesa Unified School District and Coastline Community College District, saying they were not honoring the termination clause of the lease. The suit is pending.

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Most private schools and agencies are accepting their fate and scrambling to find new property for rent or sale with little time and often little money. Most expressed no bitterness at the public school districts, but that does not resolve their problems.

Cypress’ Christian Brethren Junior-Senior High School, which has less than a year to find a new home for 840 students, is pinning its hopes in part on divine intervention.

“God has us exactly where he wants us,” Principal Barrett Luketic said. “On our knees.”

Brethren has been seeking donations for a building almost since it relocated to Orange County from Long Beach eight years ago. But raising $8 million for a new school is a long, laborious process and could take another five years, Luketic said.

“We knew once the state went to [reduced class sizes] that the pinch was on,” he said. “Deep down inside, I’m hoping our lease will be extended another year or two. We don’t have anywhere to go. But I’m a man of great faith.”

Ana V. Jacquette, deputy executive director of Orange County Head Start, is appealing to earthly powers for help.

“I would love to see businesses take a look and see that the community is in crisis,” she said.

Head Start, the federally funded preschool program for children living in poverty, was already under pressure from Washington when the class-size reduction hit. The government wanted the organization to expand its full-day programs for children whose parents will soon be cut off the welfare rolls. The county’s 40 centers are already behind: They reach less than 4,000 of the 17,000 low-income children who are eligible for assistance, Jacquette said.

The county’s Head Start programs now are receiving letters stating that the classroom spaces they’ve been using will be needed to relieve overcrowded classrooms.

Some districts, such as Orange Unified and Santa Ana Unified, have offered them use of extra land. But they still must buy their own modular classrooms.

In Fullerton, the elementary school district is giving up Head Start entirely, Jacquette said. And in Garden Grove, Head Start moved from a classroom to a church barely adequate for its needs. The same scene is being repeated in Saddleback, Brea and other communities.

“We’re going back to the 1960s, where you had Head Starts in church basements,” Jacquette said. “The classrooms are already well structured for children. When you go into churches you have to do a lot of modifications and then sometimes the church wants to take them back.”

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Besides searching for empty basements, Jacquette has told the federal government that Head Start programs in California, and particularly Orange County, are in full-scale crisis.

“We’re excited about expanding the program, but without the facilities we just can’t do it,” she said.

The same problem hit a variety of charitable and nonprofit groups in Costa Mesa that formed the Rea Community Center, which had been subleasing a former elementary school site and were told last year they would have to leave.

“It was pure desperation,” recalled Art Rorden, a volunteer with Someone Cares Soup Kitchen.

Things were looking dire until the group found a Chinese restaurant up for sale and bought it with funds raised by another charity.

“We understood the situation,” Rorden said. “It was always a tenuous string there that maybe the school district would take it back.”

The crisis over space is no less real for the school districts reclaiming their goods.

Bill Flory, director of planning and facilities for the Orange Unified School District, expects to be building and finding new schools for the next 17 years.

“Part of the struggle is, do we build more schools and then close them, as we did in the 1960s and 1970s, or do we find other alternatives?” he asked. “We are heading into some very tough times around the county.”