Districts’ Bill for School Site at Tustin Base Dies in Senate

The hopes of two Santa Ana school districts to force the city of Tustin to provide land for a campus on the former Tustin Marine base evaporated late Thursday after a state Senate committee rejected the proposal.

A bill by Assemblyman Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) would have carved out 100 acres of the base for a unique joint campus, taking students from kindergarten through community college. The plan was backed by the Santa Ana Unified School and Rancho Santiago Community College districts, with opposition from Tustin officials.

Correa’s bill passed the Assembly early Thursday on a 46-23 vote only to be quashed by the Senate local government committee. There, it failed--by one vote--to be referred to the full Senate.

In a late-hour attempt to rescue the plan, Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana) added language from the killed bill into an unrelated measure. Its fate remained uncertain late Thursday. The legislative session was to end at midnight.

The new bill cleared its first hurdle late Thursday, passing the Assembly on a 43-29 vote.

Dunn refused to give up Thursday, cajoling colleagues to support the new bill. “We’ve had a lot of people say they’re sympathetic to Santa Ana, but no one has been willing to resolve this,” he said. “We’re demanding an end to the sympathy and a time of action to resolve this problem.” Tustin officials, meanwhile, waved an olive branch late Thursday, saying they hoped Santa Ana Unified and Rancho Santiago would join forces with the South Orange County Community College District, to which the city has promised 100 acres on the base. The three districts won federal approval in 1994 to operate programs jointly on the base, but the deal fell apart after the city moved its “learning village” site exclusively under South Orange County’s control.

As the debate in Sacramento continued, Tustin Mayor Jeffery M. Thomas said the city would be willing to give Santa Ana Unified 10 acres for an elementary school no matter what happens. South Orange County Chancellor Cedric Sampson added that his district would welcome a high-tech magnet high school for Santa Ana on the site but not a conventional high school.

Santa Ana Unified officials, however, insisted they need at least 75 acres to accommodate a kindergarten through high school for their growing district, which is among the most crowded in California. Anything less would be unacceptable because the need is too great, said attorney Ruben A. Smith, representing the Santa Ana schools in Sacramento.

“The night’s not over yet, but obviously it’s getting pretty late,” Smith said with five hours to go before adjournment. “This is just one battle of many.”

The school proposal was crafted late last week as officials of Santa Ana Unified and Rancho Santiago turned up the heat in their four-year fight to force Tustin to turn over property on the base, which closed in July 1999. Tustin and South Orange County school officials quickly flew to Sacramento to mount a counteroffensive.

Tustin officials argued before legislators that giving up the land, located along Redhill Avenue between Warner Avenue and Barranca Parkway on Santa Ana’s eastern flank, would gut the city’s base redevelopment plan. Without it, the city’s intent to build new homes, stores and a golf course--to replace the economic benefit from the former base--would fall apart, they said.

In support of the Santa Ana districts, Orange County’s two legislative Democrats, Correa and Dunn, argued as forcefully for the need to provide adequate school space in the bursting urban districts, where twice as many students are housed in portable classrooms than attend all of the schools in Tustin.

The bill carried in the Assembly with full Democratic support, and its prospects appeared rosy until it hit the Senate, where its leading critic was longtime Republican leader Sen. Ross Johnson of Irvine.

Patrick Johnston (D-Stockton) said it was Johnson whose impassioned pleas persuaded him to vote against the school bill. As part of the seven-member committee, Johnston was the fourth vote to kill the bill, breaking with his three Democratic colleagues.

As a legislator with two closed bases in his districts, Johnston said, he was sympathetic to the “complicated, difficult resolution of competing demands” and equally sympathetic to the overcrowding problem in Santa Ana schools. But in the end, he said, he was “hesitant to impose a legislative remedy to a local dispute” among warring school districts.

“It was a close call,” Johnston said from the Senate floor.

If approved, the joint campus would have been a first in California. State and local officials said they know of no other facility capable of taking students from their first year of school to an associate of arts degree. Statewide, there are only 13 schools that include kindergarten through 12th grade.

The land war had escalated this week when John F. Dean, Orange County’s superintendent of schools, added his support for the joint Santa Ana proposal. Dean’s Department of Education joined the Santa Ana-based districts in 1994 to seek the land at the Tustin base. That plan was approved by the U.S. Department of Education but later rejected by the city of Tustin, which favors commercial development.

Tustin continued to insist that it had done enough by turning over nearly one-third of the 1,584-acre base for schools, parks and new roads. Tustin Unified School District will get three new schools on the base, while Irvine Unified has been promised space for an elementary-junior high school.