3 Districts Seek OK for Bonds to Aid Schools

With Chinese food on the way, Jean Sharrock huddled with a team of volunteers Thursday night in an Orange County office building. She handed them folders containing the names and phone numbers of registered voters and coached her crew on the script they would recite to persuade voters to support Measure B, the $180-million bond measure for school improvements at Saddleback Valley Unified.

“We’re down to the wire,” said the weary-eyed Sharrock, who has headed the bond campaign since its start nearly two months ago. “I wake up in the middle of the night hearing phone numbers and people’s names.”

Along with Saddleback voters, residents in two other county school districts -- Orange Unified and Huntington Beach Union High -- will decide March 2 whether to approve property tax increases to pay for the repairs, modernization and expansion of schools that officials say are desperately needed.

“Our schools are very old and very tired. And we’re growing,” said Orange Unified Assistant Supt. Thomas Godley.

More than half of the district’s 42 schools were built more than 40 years ago, he noted. In addition to repairing years of wear and tear by the district’s 31,000 students, he said, the structures need new roofs, higher electrical capacity, updated fire alarm systems and other improvements.

Officials at the other two districts echoed similar concerns.

The aging Fountain Valley High School in Huntington Beach Union, for example, continues to sink in the campus’ soft peat soil, crushing its plumbing and separating ceilings from walls. Nearly 15,000 students attend the district’s eight high schools.

And scores of buckets are needed to catch the rain that leaks through the roof on Saddleback’s Laguna Hills High, which is also infested with termites. The district serves 35,000 students in grades kindergarten through 12.

Huntington Beach Union has proposed $238 million in bonds that would cost taxpayers an additional $30 per $100,000 in assessed land value; Orange Unified voters will decide on a $200-million request, or a $39.29 tax increase per $100,000 in assessed value; Saddleback has proposed $180 million in bonds, a $37.14 increase per $100,000 in assessed value. The bonds would be repaid over 25 to 40 years.

Voters statewide will also decide on Proposition 55, a $12.3-billion state bond measure, to provide local school districts and colleges with matching funds for repair and expansion. If both the Orange Unified bond and Proposition 55 pass, for example, the district would be eligible for another $109 million from Sacramento.

But if a local measure does not pass, the district would have little or no funding for the state to match -- an outcome school officials likened to throwing away hundreds of millions of badly needed funds.

Like other district administrators, Assistant Supt. Godley expressed concern that voters would be soured by a ballot with two separate school bond measures, even though Proposition 55 would not cause a tax increase.

“I’m not confident about anything,” he said. “With the condition of the state economy and two different bond measures on the ballot, I hope people take the time to separate the issues.”

Kim Rueben, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, agreed but said she expects voters to get over the initial “sticker shock” of the two initiatives.

Interviews with several Orange County residents, however, indicated that some people were opposed to paying more for school improvement.

“I’d vote for this normally, but there is so much money going out right now, and we have to deal with all this debt,” said Ed Metter, an 80-year-old Huntington Beach resident, referring to the state’s gaping budget deficit. “I know the schools need help, but what can you do?”

Others said they were frustrated that the districts were asking for too much assistance after neglecting maintenance for too long. A $123-million bond proposed by Huntington Beach Union in 1999 failed to garner the two-thirds vote then required for passage. Today, state law requires only 55% of voters to approve.

Sixteen of the county’s 27 school districts have passed similar bonds since 1986. Surveys conducted last year by Huntington Beach Union and Orange found enough support for the bonds to pass, while Sharrock said two-thirds of the 7,500 Saddleback voters her team has called have promised support.

But, Sharrock said her team of volunteers would not stop until the polls close.

“We’ve got our fingers crossed. Nobody wants to pay higher taxes, but this is all about education. This is about kids.”