Irvine Tax Defeat Spurs Soul-Searching

Stung by defeat in a key election for one of Orange County’s best school districts, Irvine tax boosters Wednesday searched their community’s soul for answers to why the $3-million-a-year measure failed.

Why, the tax supporters asked, can other districts, less affluent districts, muster enough votes to pass school bonds while the high-scoring Irvine school system couldn’t scrape together the necessary two-thirds support for a $95-per-parcel tax?

“We did everything that anybody and everybody could possibly think of,” said campaigner Marilyn Jacks, president of Irvine’s PTA Council. “I don’t know that there was anything else that we could do; still, a number of people in the community didn’t understand what the issues were.”

Maybe the push for high voter turnout was a mistake, analysts and tax supporters said. Perhaps a tax to preserve enrichment programs--seen as an educational luxury by some--lacks the kind of concrete, tangible impact of leaky classrooms or playgrounds laden with portables. Then again, school bonds might be more palatable to voters than parcel taxes.

But others in the education and consulting fields said that voters might have lacked specific information about how the pending cuts would affect the classroom. And in one irony, they said, voters in more affluent areas can be more complacent about public schools than those in poorer areas.

While dissecting the defeat, tax backers also pressed ahead with longshot efforts to improve funding, including lobbying Sacramento for more money and more control over existing revenue, said Supt. Patricia Clark White.

At a meeting this evening, Clark said, trustees will continue planning cuts to staunch a $4-million hole in the $143-million budget. On the chopping block are jobs for 120 teachers; arts, music and science enrichment programs--but not core instruction in these areas; and the third-grade class-size reduction effort. Also threatened are nurses, health clerks and some high school counselors.

Trustees had originally planned tonight’s meeting in hopes of restoring staff.

Eunice Cluck, who helped lead opposition to the tax, said she doubts that the cuts and layoffs will ever happen. She said many opponents objected to seeing similar tax measures four times since 1983--two in the last year.

“They didn’t live within their budget,” Cluck said. “They gave the teachers a raise last spring. You don’t spend money you don’t have. . . . If all the voters who voted yes would make a donation of $167, they would have $3 million. These people want someone else to pay their bills.”

On Wednesday, theories abounded as to why the tax failed.

One Irvine trustee, Michael B. Regele, thinks there is a core constituency in the city that will not vote for a tax. Period. He pointed out that in November the district tried running its campaign with a consultant, following the typical strategy of keeping turnout low and making sure tax backers get to the polls. That failed. So they tried a different tack--a higher-profile, grass-roots effort and an exemption for tax-wary senior citizens. That failed too.

His colleague, board President Jeanne Flint, said the pro-tax message just didn’t connect.

“I just think that we have a credibility problem, at least with 11,000 citizens in Irvine,” she said. “For whatever reason, they didn’t really see the depth of the problem, understand the nature of the problem, or it wasn’t their problem.”

Others say there’s more to the equation.

Santa Ana Unified and Anaheim’s Magnolia, school districts in much lower-income areas than Irvine, recently saw bond measures pass. In their cases, school leaders said, they made a point of outlining exactly how the money would be spent. To this day, Irvine schools officials cannot provide a campus-by-campus breakdown of which programs and personnel will definitely be lost. Instead, they have an accounting of possible cuts--most, but not all, of which are expected to happen.

San Diego political consultant Larry Remer, a veteran of many successful bond campaigns, believes that Irvine’s turnout--about 44%--was probably too high. Tax supporters had pushed to get out the vote for this election--a tactic that Remer said can backfire in school tax votes. A small turnout that draws those most affected is more likely to lead to victory, he said.

But the no votes might represent a more visceral response, he said. Voters can visualize the benefits of a school facilities bond--such as roof repairs or a new school building--but the outcome of a parcel tax--saving existing programs and staff--might be harder to grasp.

“Getting over that two-thirds mark, you need to involve very basic needs that are clear and easy to delineate, such as new classrooms or rewiring for technology,” said Remer, of the Primacy Group.

Poorer Districts Used Different Strategies

One irony that struck several observers was that residents of an affluent suburb such as Irvine could better afford the tax than many impoverished, immigrant residents of Santa Ana or Anaheim, where school bonds recently passed.

“There’s a real belief in immigrant communities that [public] education is the ticket to the middle class,” said Luis Miron, chairman of UC Irvine’s department of education. “I don’t think that’s the case in Irvine. . . . There’s some skepticism about whether the district is in a financial crisis, and there are more options open to residents than public schools. The income there is sufficient for most families to send their children to private schools.”

Several school board members who recently labored to pass school bonds in their districts sympathized with disappointed Irvine officials.

“I’m not sure Irvine did anything wrong,” said Santa Ana school board President John Palacio, whose district passed a $145-million school bond last November. “We have different communities and different issues, and I think our message was much more clear.”

But despite the visual emblems of crumbling, crowded schools, Santa Ana’s bond measure did not simply sail through the electorate to approval. At every turn, the school board confronted opposition concerns head on, said Trustee Nativo V. Lopez.

At the outset, the local business community raised concerns about how such a windfall would be spent. In response, the board placed the president of the Chamber of Commerce on its campaign committee.

Three polls showed that although support for the bond was high, it fell to 50% among white males older than 50 with no children in the schools. Therefore, the campaign played up the connection between home values and good schools. Supporters from the conservative Lincoln Club as well as organized labor were enlisted to help.

“We mobilized our membership and tailored the message to working families,” said Bill Fogarty, former president of the Central Labor Council.

Organized labor donated more than $100,000 to the Santa Ana bond effort, and thousands of union members began walking precincts months before the actual vote.

The labor council twice made a similar offer of help to Irvine, Fogarty said, and received no response. Both the superintendent and organizers of Irvine’s pro-parcel-tax campaign said they were unaware of the offer.

The Magnolia School District, which passed its $9.7-million bond measure last month, took the opposite approach from Santa Ana’s: running a stealth campaign, almost hoping nobody would notice that it was asking for money.

“We were very, very quite,” said board President Esther H. Wallace. “We were worried about seniors not voting for ours, but actually we found very broad support for the bond.”

Most of Magnolia’s 7,000 students live modestly in apartments or motels, Wallace said, and only 1,600 parents are registered to vote. But as in Santa Ana, which has a 76% poverty rate in the schools, discreet calls to the broader community were heeded.

It is almost inconceivable to her that comparatively well-to-do Irvine voters would not pass such a measure in their district.

“All those good teachers are going to have to go. I hope Irvine borrows money or does something to keep those programs in,” she said. “I think [the voters are] foolish--very, very foolish.”

Times correspondent Mathis Winkler contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Measure A Defeat

Irvine voters rejected a $95-a-year parcel tax that would have helped fund enrichment programs in the Irvine Unified School District. The measure needed a two-thirds majority (66.7%) to pass.

Turnout: 29,606 (44.1%)

Registered Voters: 67,170

Yes: 18,965 (64.3%)

No: 10,528 (35.7%)

Note: Figures do not add up to vote total because a statistically insignificant number of ballots are still being counted.

Source: County of Orange