Irvine District Ponders Tax to Balance Books

Faced with a budget shortfall that won’t go away, Irvine school officials are expected to seek a new homeowners tax Monday night.

Already, parents would see higher prices for school lunches and school bus rides under the Irvine Unified School District’s proposed new budget to be unveiled tonight. The school day for some students would be about 18 minutes shorter. And without two-thirds voter approval of the $95 annual tax per homeowner, the school system also will probably have to cut its highly regarded music, science and art programs.

Even with the tax, Irvine will have a long way to go before it can bridge the gap between what it currently spends on educating its children and what it takes in.

The district has 10% more teachers per student than surrounding districts because of expanded programs for science and other subjects, according to a recent study commissioned by the district.

But because of its recent agricultural history, Irvine receives $95 less per student from the state than the average district in Orange County, and $100 less than the state average. Despite California’s recent hikes in spending on schools, educators throughout Orange County complain that much of the money comes with so many strings attached they don’t have the freedom to spend it as they see fit.

Irvine school officials are scrambling to find ways to boost revenue. On Friday they, along with principals and parents, met with two Assembly members to make their case for a legislative change that would increase the money Irvine schools receive per child from the state.

Meanwhile, the district has enough money on reserve to maintain current programs for just one more year.

After extensive community polling and an aggressive public relations campaign, school board members said they would vote to put the parcel tax on the ballot because they believe the voters of Irvine will support it.

Similar attempts at a parcel tax for Irvine schools--in 1983 and again in 1991--fell short of the necessary two-thirds voter approval, although both received a majority of yes votes. But responses to an unscientific direct mail survey this month by the district revealed that by a ratio of roughly two to one, residents support paying some amount of tax over cutting programs. The smaller the proposed tax, the more people said they were willing to pay it.

“This will be the third time, and we think three is a charm,” said school board member Margie Wakeham. “We do not want to pay another dime [in taxes], but we so value what we have here in our schools and what it does for Irvine.”

Assuming the vote is taken Monday as expected, board members say they will likely seek somewhere in the range of $95 per land parcel. Polling data helped them arrive at that figure.

“Even at $95, we don’t really solve the problem,” school board president Mike Regele said. “But [winning voter approval] is probably not doable if you go above $100.”

Certainly not everyone is a fan of the proposal as it is.

“It’s not right that they do not live within their budget,” said Irvine resident Eunice Clark, a freelance writer who vows to organize opposition to the tax. She does not have children in the Irvine schools. “They’ve got the whole bloomin’ summer to come up with some way to eliminate some of their bureaucracy, or some of their programs.”

Irvine’s education officials spent $2.5 million of the district’s reserves this year to maintain current programs for their 23,500 students.

A preliminary $130-million budget for the 1999-2000 school year, which will be revealed Monday, calls for drawing nearly that much from the district’s reserves, dipping perilously close to the state’s minimum budget reserve requirement of 3%.

If the spending were to continue at its current rate with no new revenue, projections show the district with an 8.6% deficit by the 2002-03 school year.

School board and district representatives blame the shortfall in large part on the smaller per-pupil funding that Irvine receives from the state. This is because the funding levels were established in the 1970s, when Irvine was largely farmland and its property tax base was significantly lower. A second reason for the budget crunch is that the state only partially funds many of the programs that it requires of schools, according to district officials.

The problem likely will worsen throughout Orange County, according to John Nelson, associate superintendent for business services for the county Department of Education.

“More and more earmarked funds are coming to us from the state. Whether it’s intended or not, they are not fully funded,” Nelson said. “School districts are having to find a way to make up the difference, because no one wants to forgo those funds.”

With that in mind, the school board has adopted three strategies to stem the financial bleeding before it has to cut programs.

Pushing for a parcel tax is first. With 36,000 households in Irvine, the schools stand to raise just over $3.4 million a year if the tax campaign succeeds.

The second strategy involves an intensive lobbying effort at the state level, which began at Friday’s meeting with Assembly members Bill Campbell (R-Villa Park) and Marilyn C. Brewer (R-Newport Beach). The district is seeking more money per student from the state, and more freedom over how it’s spent. The two Assembly members said they sympathized with the schools’ plight but that their hands were tied by Democratic control of the Legislature.

The third strategy stems from a new group called the Excellence in Irvine Committee, a consortium of city, school and business leaders who seek out new ways for the district to save and raise money.

Among the ideas floated so far is a possible agreement from the city to assume maintenance costs for facilities such as parks and playgrounds that it shares with the schools. A representative from the Irvine Ranch Water District is exploring ways to reduce the school district’s water bills.

Last week, Excellence in Irvine hired financial planner Dan Miller to complete a strategic business plan for the district.

“The school district is showing a lot of courage” by opening its books to Miller’s analysis, said Irvine Councilman Mike Ward, a committee member. “They want to prove to the public that what they say is true.”

If Miller’s study backs up the school district’s claims, Ward said he expects a parcel tax to succeed.

“People move here for various reasons,” Ward said, “but one of them is the school district.”

Under the new budget that will be unveiled Monday, the district would save about $500,000 over the next year by providing fewer services and charging families more:

* Students in grades four through six would spend 18 fewer minutes in the classroom each day, saving roughly $300,000 in teacher salaries but cutting into music, art and science instruction.

* Families would pay $1.50 a day for their children to ride the school bus, up from $1.

* The price of school lunches would jump 25 cents, and school employees in the administration building would have to pack a lunch or go out to eat. Their cafeteria service would be eliminated, saving $10,000 a year.

* The discretionary travel budget for district officials would be cut by $8,000.

A controversial proposal to eliminate nurses’ aides from school campuses was also floated, and while it is not included in the current plan, board members say it could resurface before a final budget is adopted in the fall.

All of the cuts would only nip at the margins of Irvine’s financial problems, says the school district’s deputy superintendent for business, Paul Reed.

“You’re still drawing from the reserves, and you still really haven’t addressed the ongoing imbalance of spending more than you take in,” Reed said. “And until you do that, you’ve got a problem.”