Crowded Classes Spill Into Courts : Schools: Overburdened Corona-Norco district is suing the city for approving building projects without demanding that developers fully fund new campuses.

CORONA —  Some school campuses here have so many portable classrooms that additional ones would have to take the place of playgrounds.

At another site, teachers without a permanent home wheel carts loaded with lesson plans from classroom to classroom. Elsewhere, a new elementary school that opened in January already is well beyond its permanent capacity.

Corona’s lack of school space isn’t much different from any other district in western Riverside County, among the fastest growing areas in the state. After grappling for years to find creative solutions to fund construction of new schools, the Corona-Norco Unified School District has seized an opportunity and taken a hard-line approach to the problem.

It is suing the city.

In a move last week that took city officials, developers and home builders by surprise, the district filed lawsuits charging that the City Council in the past two months approved seven construction projects without demanding that their developers fully fund the cost of new school facilities.

“Even in this depressed economy, we still picked up 1,200 (additional) students this year,” said Bill Hedrick, a school board trustee. “When the economy gets better, what is (the annual student population increase) going to be? Two thousand? Three thousand? If we don’t build and pay as we go, there will be a terrible price for everyone to pay later.”

District officials filed the suits on Nov. 1 to meet a deadline under the state Environmental Quality Act, which gives opponents 30 days after City Council approval to file a challenge against a development project.

Ironically, the suit could also affect a private project by the district’s superintendent, Don Helms, a landowner who has a small project pending before the City Council. Helms faces the prospect of being sued by his own district should his proposal to subdivide his citrus grove to allow more housing move forward.

Since September, the district’s lawyers have filed letters in opposition to at least seven developments that the City Council has passed, including the 973-acre Mission Crest project, which could add 3,200 new homes when completed.

“We’ve got to ask ourselves (about) the fairness of assuming that 100% of new schools should be paid by new home buyers,” said Dave Saunders, an attorney who represents landowners in south Corona, where 12,500 new homes are planned. “There’s an inequity in that.”

School officials argue that while the district has been able to handle the influx of new students so far, the situation will be unbearable if nothing is done by the turn of the century, when the district’s student enrollment could be as high 40,000, compared to nearly 23,000 this year.

District planners say they have little money to meet the increasing need for more schools. The district estimates it will need an additional three high schools, two intermediate schools and 10 elementary schools over the next decade at a cost of $303 million.

So far, only the $8-million McKinley Elementary School, now under construction and scheduled to open next summer, is fully funded.

Since 1986, the district has relied on developer fees and state funding to pay a share of construction costs of the new facilities. But the state’s construction funds are depleted, forcing the district to increasingly rely on developer’s fees to pay for new facilities.

The fees “don’t even come close to paying the rent on our portable classrooms,” said Sherry Gongaware, the district’s facilities planner. The district is leasing 232 portable classrooms this year at a cost of more than $1 million, of which developers have paid only $168,000 so far this school year because of a slowdown in housing starts, she said.

For six years, state law has bound school districts to the fee rates, which school officials say pay only about a quarter to a third of the cost of building schools. But under a recent state Court of Appeal ruling, city or county planners could deny certain construction projects if they believe that they would overburden public schools. That gave districts statewide an opening to seek more from developers.

In Corona, district officials say they collect $2,500 per average-size dwelling unit to pay for school construction, while the actual cost to buy land and build a school is about $15,000 per unit. Developers say if they had to pay the higher rates, they would have to pass much of it on to the buyer.

“It’s just not possible to shift this all on the home buyers,” said Robert Henniger, vice president of Foothill Properties, which owns a large share of south Corona property. “People buying homes now are really stretching it.”

Developers argue that student population growth is not solely attributable to new homes. They note that although the number of building permits being granted has slowed, the city’s population increased over the past year. In addition, younger families have moved into old homes, or families have doubled up in one housing unit, Henniger said.

Nevertheless, district officials argue that the current situation is irrelevant, considering what could happen if the economy gets better and development takes off.

“The vast majority of the growth that is occurring is in the new areas,” Hedrick said. “We are talking about the difference between 200 students (in an old neighborhood) versus 3-, 4-, 5,000 in a new development.”

The dispute has placed Corona-Norco Unified School District Supt. Helms in the unusual position of supporting the district’s push for increased developer fees while facing the possibility of paying his own legal costs if the district sues the city over his project.

Helms’ plans call for rezoning 8 acres of citrus groves he owns at Chase Drive and Oak Avenue to allow for half-acre housing tracts. Through his attorney, Helms requested that action on the project at a council meeting last week be delayed until Nov. 20.

“I am in kind of a unique situation,” Helms said. “It gives the public the opportunity to know a lot of people are affected by the school funding crunch. It’s not just developers. It’s ordinary landowners, and, in this case, one who happens to be the superintendent.”

Because of the potential conflict of interest, Helms said he has taken himself out of district discussions over the lawsuits, leaving the task to the district’s business division.

“As a school administrator, I would have to agree with my colleagues that we have to go after whatever means of funding are possible,” Helms said. “That’s the only legal remedy we have.”

But as a private citizen, Helms said takes a different tack on the problem. He said the public as a whole should bear the responsibility for new school construction, such as funding schools through a city or statewide bond measure.

“Education is the responsibility of everyone,” Helms said. “Everyone benefits. Everyone should be paying for it.”

As yet, the district, the City Council and developers have no plans to negotiate a resolution to the problem, although they say such negotiations are likely to be scheduled by the middle of next month.

For now, the district is making plans to place two more elementary schools on year-round schedules. One is Prado View Elementary on Corona’s west side. The school has eight portable classrooms, raising the school’s capacity to 985 students. The permanent facility, which opened last year, holds 750.

“We’re part of this overall problem we see in Riverside County,” said Prado View Principal Bob Ferrone. “When it comes to space, we’re really in for it.”