Schools Prepare Fresh Set of Bond Issues

Leaders of California’s crowded and aging schools Wednesday began formulating fresh campaigns to build new facilities, predicting greater success in future elections now that voters have made it easier to pass local school construction bonds.

“We’re going to come back and give it one more shot,” said Robert Reeves, superintendent of the Poway Unified School District in suburban San Diego, where three bond measures in 12 years have fallen just short of the needed two-thirds majority.

The Huntington Beach Union High School District also is thinking of a new try, after a $120-million bond proposal failed a year ago with 61.5% of the vote. Under the new rules, it would have passed easily, providing money to repair leaky roofs and retrofit for earthquake safety.

“Obviously, we need to go for a bond given the extent for our need for repairs in the district,” said Susan J. Roper, the district superintendent. “The question is when, and we have to have a conversation and dialogue with the community.”

With education the top priority of voters, Americans across the nation were asked to consider a record number of school-related initiatives, many of them professing to offer dissatisfied parents a choice in how to educate their children. As in California, voters in Oregon, Colorado and elsewhere tended to throw their support behind the public schools.

In California and Michigan, voters turned down vouchers to help children attend private schools while in Washington state they again rejected a proposal to create charter schools, a measure backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

“Almost all of those [initiatives] that passed showed a willingness to spend more on public schools,” said Mike Griffith, a policy analyst with Education Commission of the States, a research group in Denver.

In a closely watched race, voters by a wide margin approved an end to bilingual education in Arizona, a measure backed by entrepreneur Ron Unz of California. Two years ago, his Proposition 227 prevailed among voters to halt most dual-language schooling in California.

Measure supporters complain that some Spanish-speaking students in the state have spent more than eight years in bilingual classes intended to serve as a transition to mainstream English courses.

California voters overwhelmingly rejected Proposition 38, which would have provided $4,000 vouchers to any student from kindergarten through 12th grade wishing to attend private school. A Los Angeles Times exit poll showed that strong opposition cut across all demographic categories. Only conservative Republicans supported the measure.

At the same time, Californians voted 53% to 47% to make it easier to build new schools by lowering the threshold for approving local bonds. Such measures will now have to garner 55% of the vote rather than two-thirds.

Exit poll data showed strong support for the measure among all age groups except the elderly. Whites were split on the issue, while other ethnic groups strongly favored it.

Voters in March rejected a nearly identical measure that would have required a school district to garner a simple majority to pass a bond measure.

Education officials in several districts were elated by a decision they called long overdue.

“I think we have a great opportunity,” said Gary Goodson, superintendent of the San Gabriel Unified School District, where three bond measures have failed to earn the necessary two-thirds approval over the last decade.

Asked if he expected Proposition 39 to encourage gun-shy districts in the cradle of anti-tax conservatism to try for bond money, Orange County Supt. of Schools John F. Dean replied: “Absolutely. We’re elated because it will make a big impact on Orange County.”

Seven Orange County school districts--a full fourth of the county’s school systems--have passed bonds within the past two years. But in addition to the failed Huntington Beach bond election, several such measures have been defeated, including Anaheim City School District, the most overcrowded district in the county, which has been running both year-round and double sessions. In addition, an attempt at a parcel tax in the Irvine schools was rejected earlier this year.

Jeanne Flint, president of the Irvine Unified School District board, called Proposition 39’s passage “great news.” But she said it affected only building and rehabilitation of school facilities, not program needs, such as those Irvine proposed.

Laguna Beach could be the next district to try for bonds, which it would use to help pay for its $35-million modernization program.

But there is a catch. Board member Robert Whalen said the district may put a measure on the ballot in the spring. The 55% threshold is only for general elections, and the next one in Orange County takes place in 2002. For a special election, two-thirds approval is still necessary.

The question, Whalen said, is whether to try to get past the higher standard and get the money 15 months earlier, or to wait and slow down the work.

“We’d put it on once we determined there was a good baseline of support,” he said. “But I think there is.”

Analysts say they believe the time could be ripe for school districts to win at the polling booth. They say three factors will prompt voters to spend on new schools: the healthy economy, the clear need for new schools at a time of soaring enrollments and strict accountability in the new law. School districts must specify what projects they intend to tackle with the bond money.

School districts have placed 817 bond measures before voters over the last 14 years, succeeding in 54.5% of the cases. Had the new standard been applied, nearly all the bond measures would have passed.

Around the nation, voters used initiatives to approve programs helping schools raise money, giving teachers cost-of-living raises and leaving teachers free to discuss issues relating to homosexuality.

In Washington state, voters overwhelmingly approved the use of surplus revenues to reduce class sizes and to expand learning programs and teachers’ training.

Times education writer Jill Leovy and researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this story.