School Officials Consider Bond

Faced with a $77-million wish list of needed repairs and new buildings, Fullerton school officials are looking into a bond measure to help pay for at least some of those projects.

The Fullerton School District Board of Trustees this month spent $32,000 on a study to see whether a general obligation bond could be passed to help cover the costs of repairing old schools or building new ones. All of the district’s campuses are more than 30 years old.

Patricia Godfrey, assistant superintendent of business services, said the district is still many months away from considering a bond issue and emphasized that there are many other funding opportunities available.

Godfrey said she did not know how last year’s passage of Proposition 39--enabling school districts to pass bonds with a simple majority of votes--would affect Fullerton’s chances of getting a bond approved. Brea Unified School District in June 1999 passed a $27-million bond with what was then a required two-thirds majority vote. Like Fullerton, Brea had hired a consultant to look into the matter before the bond was put on the ballot. Meanwhile, school officials continue to seek out funding to pay for upgrades to their aging campuses. Last year, the district renovated 12 campuses and installed air-conditioning at those schools. It recently entered into a $3-million contract to fix up the remaining campuses with new lighting and air-conditioning, and has allocated $700,000 for the architectural and engineering drawings needed to apply for state money to upgrade existing schools, Godfrey said.