L.A. Schools Face a Fight for Bond Issue

With little time and money, the Los Angeles school district is engaged in its toughest bond campaign yet as it seeks voter approval for a fourth multibillion-dollar school construction measure.

Campaign strategists say they are unable to convene focus groups or conduct polls and have scaled back mailings to voters.

Although the $3.9-billion bond has won support from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and scores of other local and state politicians, the campaign has not attracted some of the notable heavy-hitter endorsers of past bonds. Absent this time, for example, are billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and former state Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg.

“At the beginning, before we had proven a thing, people were willing” to support bond measures, said Glenn Gritzner, special assistant to school district Supt. Roy Romer.

“Now, we have proven that if they approve these bonds, we can build and repair these schools. Ironically, that creates the sense of ‘Do you really need this bond?’ This campaign is about reminding people about the remaining need.”

Measure Y, so named because backers hoped it would inspire voters to mark “Yes” on their ballots Nov. 8, is the final bond needed to complete a massive school construction effort in the 727,000-student district, officials said. To pass, it needs 55% approval.

Scheduled for completion in 2012, the project calls for an estimated 160 new schools and extensive renovations to others that will provide enough desk space to end involuntary busing for students and reliance on year-round multitrack calendars. So far, L.A. Unified has opened 46 new schools and made repairs at hundreds of older campuses.

The bond would increase taxes an average of $26.71 per $100,000 of assessed residential and commercial property value. The previous three school construction bond issues together have raised taxes about $85 for every $100,000 of assessed property value.

About 40% of the proceeds would be spent building a final round of about 25 elementary schools, many of them in South Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. A similar amount would be spent on repairs to existing schools.

Romer pushed strongly to place the bond on the special election ballot.

Although much of the $9.5 billion from the previous three bonds has not yet been spent, Romer and district facilities officials said the money has been allocated and that Measure Y is needed to keep the construction project on schedule.

“We have an obligation to finish this job,” Romer said. “When you’ve got momentum, you’ve got to keep it going. This is the right time.”

If the bond does not pass, Romer has said, he will urge the board to place it on future ballots. If voters repeatedly reject the idea, the scope of the construction drive would have to be scaled back.

Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., which is opposing the bond and provided the argument against it in the sample ballot, voiced concern about the district’s aggressive stance. “Are we saying, ‘No bonds ever?’ No, absolutely not,” he said. “But there would be no harm to the school building project if we put the decision off for a year or two.”

Unlike previous efforts, the campaign is facing a host of strategic disadvantages, said Darry Sragow, an attorney and Democratic consultant who also led the previous three bond campaigns.

Most vexing to Sragow is the lack of time he has to orchestrate and launch a campaign. This summer, the seven-member Los Angeles Board of Education spent weeks debating, in part, the wisdom of turning to taxpayers less than a year and a half after they approved a school bond in March 2004. After twice postponing a vote, the board finally gave its go-ahead in late July.

With fundraising difficult in late summer, Sragow said, the campaign did not start in earnest until early September, leaving him less than three months. Past bond campaigns ran about six months. The first mailing to prospective voters was sent on Friday.

The narrow window has curtailed fundraising efforts. So far, donors -- many of them developers and education companies -- have contributed about $785,000 and made pledges for about $250,000 more. With most of the fundraising over, Sragow said he is hoping to reach $1.3 million, significantly less than the $1.7 million and $2 million spent on the previous two bond campaigns.

“Time is money,” Sragow said. “In this short campaign, you only get to call somebody once and they either say ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ We only have time to pick the low-hanging fruit.”

As a result, plans for an understated campaign have turned almost spartan. Sragow reluctantly decided to forgo convening focus groups and conducting polls in order to send out a fourth mailing. For previous bonds, voters received at least six mailings.

The California Teachers Assn. and United Teachers Los Angeles -- the powerful state and local teachers unions -- each contributed $75,000 to the bond campaign. Both, however, have diverted much of their attention to fighting Proposition 75, which would restrict the use of union dues for political purposes, and other controversial statewide proposals that will be on the ballot along with Measure Y.

The campaign is banking on the accuracy of a poll commissioned by the school district in June, in which 57% of likely voters, after being told about the work remaining on the construction project, said they would definitely or probably vote for it.

As in past campaigns, there will be no costly television or radio spots and no phone banks.

To win, Sragow and district officials said, the campaign must rally a base of black and Latino voters, whose children make up more than 80% of the district’s enrollment.

Sragow said many of these parents know of the district’s need for new schools because their children are the most likely to attend crowded campuses “where the bathroom doesn’t work and the ceiling is falling down and ... there are so many kids that they have to be on some crazy schedule.”

Campaign mailings also target the “upper demographic,” Sragow and district officials said, referring to older, more conservative white voters who traditionally vote in high numbers but often do not send their children to district schools.

Along with the mayor, the campaign has secured other high-profile endorsements and support from scores of organizations and civic leaders, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), former Mayor Richard Riordan and teachers’ unions.

On the other hand, Hertzberg, who ran for mayor of Los Angeles this year, wrote an opinion article in the Jewish Journal last month urging voters to oppose the bond because of what he called the school district’s poor design of new schools.

More conspicuous is the absence of Broad.

In the two previous bond campaigns, Broad gave $300,000 and $50,000 respectively and encouraged others to give, but he has not yet contributed to this campaign.

He declined to comment for this article, but Broad is widely believed to be dissatisfied with the district’s level of support for charter schools, which are publicly funded but are largely independent from the district.

Charter school leaders have angrily denounced the board’s decision to allot $50 million of the bond money to charter schools as insufficient given the schools’ increasing popularity with parents.

This year 29,174 students are enrolled at 76 charter schools within Los Angeles Unified -- increases of 5,322 students and 18 campuses from last year.

Sragow and others acknowledged that the debate over support for charter schools, among other issues facing the district, has left some prominent figures weary and wary.

“There’s no question that some parts of the power structure in L.A. are feeling fatigued about school bonds,” Sragow said. “Do I worry about it? Yeah. Do I think it will cost us the election? No.”

Also of some concern is that the bond appears on a ballot with eight other measures. With many bond supporters expected to vote against the controversial, statewide propositions, Gritzner said, the district intentionally requested the Y designation for the bond measure in an effort to set it apart in voters’ minds.

For “this one more than the others,” Sragow said, “we just have to say our prayers, keep our fingers crossed and hope that enough voters who have an interest in the schools come out and vote.”