Schools Seek Federal Help to Get Base Land

Santa Ana school officials will ask U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley to intervene in their quest to force Tustin to turn over 100 acres on the city’s former Marine base for a joint campus.

Officials with the Santa Ana Unified and Rancho Santiago Community College districts said they hope to persuade Riley to push the department’s 1994 approval for school sites on the base, which included Santa Ana.

“We’re going after it, we’re ready for the fight and we’re going to win,” vowed Brian Conley, president of Rancho Santiago’s board of trustees, at a press conference at Valley High School in Santa Ana, where 40 portable classrooms consume the school’s blacktop because of severe crowding.

“If necessary, we will converse with the White House to assure that we are given adequate representation,” said Al Mijares, superintendent of Santa Ana Unified.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) said in a prepared statement Wednesday that she will lobby administration officials in Washington to help resolve the issue.

“I believe that the federal government will be more inclined to relinquish control of the land if it is used to address the pressing need of providing a quality education for our kids,” she said.

Last week, a last-ditch effort to mandate the land transfer through state law passed the Assembly even as supporters lined up a majority of votes in the Senate. But the bill died without a vote in the Legislature’s final minutes after intense lobbying by state Sen. Ross Johnson (R-Irvine), aided by Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco).

Undaunted, Santa Ana officials are asking Riley to help, based on the 1994 approval by federal education officials of a plan that would have given land at the 1,584-acre base to Santa Ana Unified, Rancho Santiago and the South Orange County Community College District. Only the South County district remains in the Tustin base redevelopment plan, receiving about 100 acres.

In 1996, the city rejected Santa Ana Unified’s request for 75 acres. With a third of the base earmarked for schools, parks and homeless housing, Tustin officials insisted that giving any more away would destroy its redevelopment plan, which awaits the Navy’s approval

“We believe federal law is on our side,” Tustin City Manager William A. Huston said Wednesday.

“When you look at the legislative history, congressional intent and case law at the federal level, it’s very clear that the Department of Education cannot cram [a school site] down our throat.”

As a compromise, Tustin offered the Santa Ana district 10 acres for an elementary school on the base, $3.5 million in school-impact fees that otherwise would have been paid over 20 years, and space for 1,000 students to attend a magnet high-school program on the south Orange County site.

Santa Ana officials said the offer wasn’t good enough. The district hasn’t enough undeveloped land left to build schools and faces some of the most overcrowded conditions in the state.

At Valley High School, the site of the press conference, 2,600 students are jammed into a school built for 1,800 students.

“We are standing up for what’s right and not just doing what is expedient,” said Eddie Hernandez, chancellor of the Rancho Santiago district.