O.C. School Districts Wage Battle for Turf

Emboldened by the passage of Proposition 39, which lowered the threshold to pass school construction bonds from a two-thirds majority to 55%, six school districts in Orange County--the most in recent memory--will ask voters to approve $490 million for new schools and renovation projects March 5.

But for most of these districts, getting the money will be only half the battle.

All the districts with bond measures are in north Orange County, where decades of development have gobbled up most of the land. Now, classrooms are bursting with students, and there is little, if any, space to build.

“Most of our schools were built around the same time Disneyland was,” in the 1950s, said Lettie Boggs, assistant superintendent of facilities and operation for the Anaheim City School District. “Back then there were still orchards in Anaheim. That is certainly no longer true.”

The scarcity of available land is forcing the Anaheim elementary school district to consider unprecedented measures. If its $111-million bond passes, the district will for the first time look to condemn existing buildings--in this case more than 30 apartment complexes and several businesses--to build schools. It also has plans for multistory campuses, still a rarity in California, especially for elementary schools.

The district was originally built for 11,000 students but has twice that number, and it is the only Orange County district where all campuses operate on a year-round calendar.

Officials say the district needs land for three new elementary schools and expansion of three existing campuses.

In all six school districts, the bonds will be repaid with property tax increases ranging from $16 per $100,000 of assessed value in the Huntington Beach City School District, which has a $30-million measure on the March ballot, to $32.50 per $100,000 in Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, which is asking voters to approve $102 million in bonds.

If a separate state bond measure passes in November, the districts could receive state matching funds.

Some opponents of the bond measures argue that new schools will only increase the size of a public education system that they say has failed its students.

“Nobody moves to Anaheim for the schools,” said Joan Burke, a member of Anaheim Home Owners Maintaining Their Environment, a group opposed to bond measures in the city’s school districts.

“The answer is [school] vouchers,” said Burke, whose grown children attended the area’s public schools. Vouchers, she said, would allow parents to send their children to private schools, and thus ease overcrowding at public campuses.

Besides Anaheim City, three other districts plan to build schools. Anaheim Union High School District, which hopes to pass a $132-million restoration and construction bond, wants a new junior high school. Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified plans to build four schools. And Fullerton School District will build an elementary school if its $49.7-million bond measure passes.

In most cases, districts will have to buy or condemn buildings.

“It is really a sign of the changing times in our community,” said Dennis Smith, superintendent of Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified. “The perception of a sleepy, suburban area with plenty of land is certainly not the case anymore.”

Of the six bond measures, only the Huntington Beach elementary and Fullerton high school districts’ do not involve land acquisition. Enrollment has leveled off in the Huntington Beach district, officials said, and bond money will be used to renovate campuses.

Fullerton District Faces 12.5% More Students

The Fullerton Joint Union High School District asks voters to approve $67.9 million in bonds to repair aging schools and add at least one building at each of six schools to accommodate a 12.5% enrollment growth in the last five years.

The solution will further crowd common areas like playing fields, but Supt. Michael F. Escalante said it is the best option given the scarcity of available land.

Fullerton, like other North County communities, experienced a large wave of growth in the 1960s and 1970s. Families, many from Los Angeles, migrated to north Orange County, beckoned by its suburban settings. Homes and schools were built to accommodate the newcomers. Most of those families have moved on, replaced in the last two decades by a wave of immigrants. Much of the old housing has been replaced by apartment complexes that hold more families, and school districts are serving ever larger numbers of students with the same facilities.

“The city,” Escalante said, “grew around us.”

Perhaps nobody knows the challenges of building schools in Orange County’s new urban reality better than officials at the Santa Ana Unified School District.

The district’s 2-year-old Mendez Fundamental Intermediate School was built above a shopping mall parking garage. The three-story project was part of a now-defunct state program that sought creative solutions to the space crunch in urban school districts.

Now, with $145 million in bond money, the Santa Ana district has plans to build 13 traditional campuses. But finding the land has been a challenge.

“Just because we have money in the wallet doesn’t mean we can go out and build,” said Santa Ana Unified Supt. Al Mijares.

In the two years since the bond measure passed, the district has acquired land for one school. In an agreement reached with the city last month, the district will build a high school on a leased parcel in Centennial Park. The school is projected to open in 2005.

The Santa Ana district is also embroiled in a legal battle with a group of homeowners near the proposed Lorin Griset Elementary School on a vacant lot near the Santa Ana Freeway. The residents, who last month sued to block the project, say they don’t want or need a school in their backyard.

The problem is, pretty much any place in north Orange County is in someone’s backyard.

“It is getting more and more difficult for growing districts,” said Duwayne Brooks, director of facilities for the California Department of Education. “It used to be that if a district wanted to build a school and the community said it doesn’t want it there, you could go somewhere else. But it is a question of options.”

Fewer Options and More Obstacles

Local district officials say they have few of them. Stringent state environmental guidelines further limit the types of lots schools can be built on and an available site may not be where the students are.

Meanwhile, the crowding grows worse. North Orange County campuses have some of the highest student populations in California, according to recent study by the California Department of Education.

Fremont Elementary in Santa Ana, for example, has 341 students per acre of school grounds, among the highest in the state and rivaling density rates of schools in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Anaheim’s Marshall Elementary has 240 students per acre.

The state-recommended ratio for a typical elementary school is 51 to 61 students per acre.

Overcrowded districts like Santa Ana and Anaheim accommodate more students by juggling year-round schedules and sometimes dual sessions, where classes start at different times of the day. Sometimes two teachers share the same classroom for part of the day.

The lack of facilities is felt in other ways too. In Anaheim, elementary school students carry chairs to parking lots for school assemblies, and portable classrooms have become a permanent part of the landscape at many campuses.

Finding real estate has become a crucial education issue, said Santa Ana Trustee Nativo V. Lopez. “The land acquisition dilemma ultimately will resonate in the quality of the education for our children.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC) On the Ballot

Six Orange County school districts and one college district in north Orange County are seeking voter support for $731.6 million in construction bonds. The districts say the bonds are needed for new facilities to house growing enrollment and for repairs.

District: Anaheim City School District

Bond Amount: $111 million

Taxpayer Annual Cost (Per $100,000 assessed valuation): $30.00

Purpose: Four new schools; lunch shelters; infrastructure and maintenance improvements at most of its 23 schools; new two-story classroom buildings at Mann and Lincoln schools

District: Anaheim Union High School District

Bond Amount: $132 million

Taxpayer Annual Cost (Per $100,000 assessed valuation): $37.20

Purpose: Build a junior high school; major classroom renovations at all schools

District: Fullerton Joint Union High School District

Bond Amount: $67.9 million

Taxpayer Annual Cost (Per $100,000 assessed valuation): $19.90

Purpose: New buildings at each of its six comprehensive high schools; infrastructure and maintenance improvements

District: Fullerton School District

Bond Amount: $49.7 million

Taxpayer Annual Cost (Per $100,000 assessed valuation): $29.85

Purpose: Build K-6 school for new Amerige Heights housing development; infrastructure improvements for existing schools

District: Huntington Beach City School District

Bond Amount: $30 million

Taxpayer Annual Cost (Per $100,000 assessed valuation): $16.00

Purpose: Infrastructure and maintenance improvements at nine of its 10 campuses

District: North Orange Community College District

Bond Amount: $239 million

Taxpayer Annual Cost (Per $100,000 assessed valuation): $18.50

Purpose: Convert old Martin Luther Hospital building into classrooms and administration offices; new libraries at Fullerton and Cypress colleges; infrastructure improvements at both college; renovate District Education Center; improved parking

District: Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District

Bond Amount: $102 million

Taxpayer Annual Cost (Per $100,000 assessed valuation): $32.50

Purpose: Two new elementary schools; one middle school; Yorba Linda will gets its first high school; infrastructure and maintenance improvements at most of its 31 schools

Sources: Orange County Registrar of Voters, school district superintendents