$3.9 Million Is Donated to Irvine Schools

In a stunning turnaround to a dismal funding dilemma, the Irvine Co., Donald Bren Foundation and Irvine Public Schools Foundation together pledged nearly $3.9 million to Irvine schools Thursday, more than making up the funding gap left when a parcel-tax measure failed at the polls Tuesday.

The surprise announcement came just as the Irvine school board convened a special meeting to start pondering how it would go about laying off 120 teachers and cut arts, music and science programs as well as raise some class sizes.

“Coming over here tonight, I was dreading what we were going to hear,” Trustee Margie Wakeham said. This “is kind of like having your prison sentence reprieved. We’ve got one more year to make this work.”

The funding provides a respite from layoffs and program cutbacks in a school district so admired for its high scores and enriched programs that it draws home buyers to the city from all over the region.

A proposed $95 parcel tax failed to garner the required two-thirds majority at the polls Tuesday, falling little more than two percentage points shy. The tax would have raised about $3 million annually for the school district over the next 16 years.

More than a quarter of the money pledged Thursday has not yet been raised. The schools foundation has only $500,000, or less than one-third, of the $1.65 million it pledged. Foundation President Carolyn McInerney said her group is promising to get the rest of the money by May 15.

As McInerney spoke at the meeting, parents and other residents in the audience scribbled out checks for amounts varying from $95 to hundreds of dollars and handed them to her.

The Irvine Co. will make a lump-sum payment of $1.875 million, an amount it had already promised to the schools foundation as part of a $3-million pledge in 1998. The new payment schedule will accelerate the original offer by two years, Senior Vice President Michael Le Blanc said.

The Donald Bren Foundation will give $350,000.

Though the donation reflects the Irvine Co.’s civic generosity, it also helps the real-estate developer keep a key sales edge when promoting the area to potential clients: good schools for technology employees.

The Irvine Co. has for 15 years been the leading force behind turning the region into a major technology center. According to Donald Bren, chairman of the Irvine Co., everything about the company’s efforts is aimed at transforming 5,000 acres of agricultural fields into the next Silicon Valley.

To do so, the company has developed the Irvine Spectrum, a wide swath of industrial park that is home to thousands of tech companies, ranging from consumer electronics behemoth Toshiba America Electronic Components to chip giant Broadcom Corp.

Good Schools Good for Local Economy

Given how competitive it is to hire--and retain--talented technology workers, local computer employees praised the donation.

“That’s absolutely fantastic. The reason we live here, why we own a house in Irvine, is because of the schools,” said Robert Nesler, an acting executive game producer with the Irvine software firm Interplay Entertainment Corp. Nesler, 33, has a 6-year-old daughter.

“We were very worried that we’d have to move if the money problem with the schools wasn’t resolved and the school programs started to deteriorate,” he said.

Local technology executives insist that keeping local school programs funded is important if the county, as a whole, is going to expand its technology presence.

Improving education as a means of bolstering the local pool of talent has been a rallying point for executives such as Dwight Decker, chief executive of communication chip maker Conexant Systems Inc. in Newport Beach.

“It will definitely make the region a more attractive draw, particularly if you’re not cutting science and music programs back and you’re keeping the teachers here,” Conexant spokesman Tom Stites said. “Hopefully, going forward, the city will be able to figure out a way to fix its financial shortfalls.”

Teachers who had received layoff notices came to Thursday’s meeting expecting to watch a sad march of speakers go before the trustees and plead for some alternative to layoffs.

Instead, they were greeted by a change in their circumstances.

“I just figured that we were going to watch the hatchet fall,” said Diane Brand, a teacher at Sierra Vista Middle School who received a layoff notice.

Her family was going to spend spring break at Pismo Beach while she stayed home to job-hunt. Now she can join them.

“I’m so jazzed,” Brand said.

But amid the euphoria at the school board meeting came reminders from McInerney and board members that the donation only gives the district an extra year to find long-term solutions to a projected $4-million annual budget shortfall.

“I must emphasize that this funding is a Band-Aid, not a cure,” McInerney said. “[It] provides additional time over the next 12 months for the district and the community to develop permanent funding sources.”

Board members mentioned a change in state education funding laws as the most obvious way to permanently shore up the district’s finances. Because of formulas created in the 1970s, when Irvine was a small agricultural town with few residents, the district receives about $100 less per student than the state average.

Supt. Patricia Clark White announced Thursday that a bill in the state Assembly that would bring an additional $1 million to $2 million to the district each year had moved from the Senate Education Committee to the Appropriations Committee.

On the heels of the bailout announcement, the Irvine school trustees voted to rescind the list of budget cuts it had adopted in February, which totaled almost $5 million.

But several items on the original list were indeed cut Thursday night, including technology purchases and upgrades, the emergency preparedness budget and support for some special education, sports administration and elementary school supervision.

Opponents of the parcel tax had said throughout the campaign that the district could find funding sources other than Irvine’s residents. News of the bailout was no surprise to them, and they said they will keep monitoring the district’s fiscal habits.

“We knew it,” said Trish Harrison, an anti-tax campaigner, about the bailout. But “we want to hold them accountable. We don’t want them to waste any money.”

Times staff writer P.J. Huffstutter contributed to this report.