Irvine Schools See New Push for Steady Cash Flow

The planning spun fast and furious Friday, a day after the announcement of the one-time donation of $3.9 million to stave off deep cuts at Irvine schools for a year following voters’ rejection of a parcel tax.

School backers were prepping to plaster the city with fliers, pester corporate boards for meetings and donations, and hit up neighbors in school parking lots to prevent teacher layoffs and cutbacks in Irvine’s much-praised music, arts and science programs.

And administrators and PTA officials said they would redouble their efforts to win passage of legislation to get the academically acclaimed Irvine Unified School District the same level of state funding as similar districts.

The district had failed a fourth time Tuesday to persuade Irvine voters to approve a $95-per-parcel tax that would have generated $3 million annually for public schools. Even with higher-than-usual turnout for a special local election, the tax measure fell a few percentage points shy of the two-thirds approval needed for passage.

The one-time donation--a promise made by the Irvine Co., the Donald Bren Foundation and the Irvine Public Schools Foundation--will let the district avoid the cuts for about a year.

It will keep at bay for a year the layoffs of 120 teachers and the slashing of programs in one of Orange County’s highest-scoring school districts. It will prevent--at least temporarily--the erosion of public confidence in the city’s schools--a prime selling point in developer Irvine Co.’s effort to turn the master-planned community into Silicon Valley South.

But step No. 1 will be to make good on the Irvine Public Schools Foundation’s portion of the pledge--$1.65 million. The foundation has only $500,000 on hand and must raise the remaining $1 million or so--what the group usually generates in a year--in exactly a month. The bulk of the overall contribution--$1.875 million from the Irvine Co. and $350,000 from the Donald Bren Foundation--is already available.

“We have such fantastic, richly deserved wealth in the Irvine business community,” said Irvine

City Councilman Larry Agran. “It’s time to sit down with those business leaders and encourage them to reinvest in the community.”

Greg Bradbard, executive director of the school foundation, said the push for cash will be on parallel tracks. The networks of parents, real estate agents and arts and science boosters who rallied around the parcel tax will be asked to make their contribution anyway--to pay what they can in lieu of the tax.

Separately, the foundation and its 18-member board are poring over a list of 9,000 Irvine companies, from home-based businesses to Baxter Healthcare to see who in the foundation has contacts that might net donations. By late Friday, the group already had flagged more than 200 companies.

The foundation doesn’t plan to lean on current heavy donors, including Allergan, Greystone Homes and Taco Bell. Instead, companies in the technology and biotechnology fields--many of which already support UC Irvine--can expect phone calls.

“The universities are kind of the big dogs in fund-raising; the public school system hasn’t received a whole lot of support from the corporate community,” Bradbard said. “This [campaign] will be unusual that way. . . . We’re looking for at least a $25,000 gift from anyone who can afford it, such as the major corporations in the Irvine Spectrum that have had great success and have seen rising stocks in the last year.”

Gifts of appreciated assets are welcomed too, he said.

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However, getting younger companies to contribute to the foundation could be a challenge, said Tom Burnham, foundation president of health care developer Allergan Inc., which gives generously to public schools, including Irvine’s. The company, through its $20-million foundation, already has ponied up about $50,000 for the Irvine Public Schools Foundation over the last two years.

Burnham, a former Irvine school board president, said he is enthusiastic that the parcel tax loss can spur the kind of true public-private partnership the district needs to survive.

But while the region has been flush with philanthropic dollars, Burnham knows of 25 major capital fund-raising campaigns currently underway in Orange County. And unlike Allergan, which is 50 years old, much of the county’s wealth is concentrated in relatively new companies, which don’t have a lot of cash.

“They really don’t have a foundation of philanthropy in a lot of these new companies,” Burnham said. “Most have under 100 employees. [They] are kind of growing with the market. It’s not necessarily a charitable environment.”

The Irvine Co., working through the schools foundation, wants to play a “significant role” in finding a permanent solution to the school district’s fiscal crisis, Senior Vice President Michael Le Blanc said.

Keeping home values high and persuading technology companies to stay put are critical to the Irvine Co. But the developer’s interest is in keeping communities strong, not just the bottom line, he said.

“We’ve been able to work something out with the schools foundation that buys some time,” Le Blanc said. “There is still work to do. From our standpoint, we want to work with the foundation and the city and other business leaders to see what can be done” long-term.

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The best hope so far for a permanent fix is a longshot change to state funding laws. A formula set in the 1970s, when much of Irvine was still a small agricultural hamlet, results in the district receiving about $100 less a student than the state average. That shortfall is deepened by Irvine’s devotion to specialized instruction in science, math and art--extras that many other districts have long since abandoned.

A state bill to address perceived funding inequities is wending its way through the Capitol now; it would provide Irvine an extra $1 million to $2 million a year.

Many who campaigned for the parcel tax and then heard of the one-time donation reacted with a mixture of relief and befuddlement.

“It’s bittersweet,” said teachers union President Gail Rothman. “Sweet because we will retain all these wonderful teachers. Bitter because I’m concerned about the future. I know [the funding] is not ongoing. It’s a wonderful bridge, but . . . budgeting starts again in December. We cannot go through this pain again. It’s not fair to play with people’s lives this way.”

Speaking as a father and tax backer, Mark Petracca said he felt suckered by the move.

“Here’s the question: Why didn’t they do it a year ago?” asked Petracca, chairman of UC Irvine’s political science department. “What’s immoral here--and I don’t use that word lightly--is to put the children of this district and the teachers who got pink-slipped . . . through the uncertainty in their lives.”

School Trustee Mike Regele, however, said it made sense to try first to pass the tax because that revenue stream is ongoing, and donations are not.

“[The Irvine Co.] felt the better long-term solution was to come together for a community problem and solve it as a community,” he said. “I support that. It’s not healthy for a school district to depend on a funding stream from the Irvine Co. or anybody else.”

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Petracca said the turn of events made him wonder if the bailout wasn’t previously planned, an assertion that participants deny.

The planning began as initial returns from the parcel tax vote trickled into what was envisioned as a parcel tax victory party at the Woodbridge Village homeowners group’s clubhouse. But “yes” votes didn’t reach expectations, said Carolyn McInerney, foundation president.

Over pizza, she and Le Blanc marveled at how many people worked so hard only to fail. They commiserated, then set up a telephone meeting for the next day. More meetings and calls ensued over the next two days.

“Obviously, you spend a little time being upset, angry and incredulous [at the tax defeat], and then you move on,” McInerney said. “We didn’t think we had any other choice but to act.”

The deal wasn’t sealed until Le Blanc, district Supt. Patricia Clark White and Irvine Co. executive Gary Hunt, representing the Donald Bren Foundation, met at school district headquarters two hours before the Thursday school board meeting where the deal was announced.