Most School Districts Still Not Ready to Try Their Luck at Bond Measure

While two more Orange County school districts plan to try for bond measures next year, the pace of such measures seems to be slowing despite the success Tuesday of two bonds.

Voters in both the Newport-Mesa Unified School District and the La Habra City School District easily approved bond measures to fix up their deteriorated campuses. Those victories bring the number of bonds passed in the last two years to seven--a full fourth of Orange County’s school systems.

But officials at most districts in the county said Wednesday that they have no plans to try for a bond.

Most said they are either getting by with current funding from Sacramento or are checking all other options before going to the taxpayers. And one educator pointed out that with Gov. Gray Davis proposing billions of dollars more for schools in the coming years, bond measures could become less popular.

“We’re certainly investigating it, but we haven’t come to any decision yet,” said Theresa Daem, superintendent of Laguna Beach Unified. “We’re not going to go to the local public unless we know we don’t have any other alternative.”

Tuesday’s Wins Buoyed Neighboring Districts

But administrators in the Fullerton Joint Union and Huntington Beach City districts said they’ve discussed placing their own bond measures on 2001 ballots, and approval rates higher than 70% in Tuesday’s elections buoyed hopes for their own future success.

“We love it,” said Jerry Buchanan, an assistant superintendent for the Huntington Beach City district. “It’s always good news when districts as close by as those are pulling in 70%.”

And the Anaheim City district, where Supt. Roberta A. Thompson says the schools hold 10,000 more students than they were built for, will probably have no choice but to request help from taxpayers in a year or two, she said.

Before the current run of bond measures in the county, which began with Buena Park’s victory in November 1998, the only other funding request in more than two decades had come from Anaheim City in April of that year. Their request for $48 million got 45% support from voters. A bond measure requires two-thirds voter approval, or 67%.

But simply by holding the election, the elementary school district qualified for state hardship funding and received $48 million, Thompson said. With $190 million needed in construction and renovation, according to the district’s calculations, that money will probably be gone within the year.

“We were the first ones in the county [to propose a bond measure]. It was new. It hadn’t been done before,” Thompson said. “As a result of that, the information has been coming out about schools’ needs. To some extent our beginning the process kind of paved the way for other districts.”

Ironically, the success of La Habra City and Buena Park’s bond measures could hamper Fullerton Joint Union’s efforts to pass a tax increase.

Since students from La Habra and Buena Park feed into the high school district’s campuses, property owners who already pay higher taxes would have to vote to raise them again.