Bond Measures Will Fuel School Building Boom

California’s schools and universities, long confined to aging and crowded campuses that became potent symbols of the decline of public education, are about to undergo a hard-hat invasion unmatched since the 1960s.

Not only did voters statewide approve a $9.2-billion bond measure--the largest in California history--on Nov. 3, but voters in local elections have also approved a slew of new spending. In all, roughly $18 billion worth of school construction bonds have won approval in California in less than two years.

The Los Angeles Unified School District got a $2.4-billion bond passed in April 1997. San Diego City Unified voters this month approved $1.5 billion in bonds for school repairs and new construction. Even in tax-averse Orange County, Buena Park voters agreed to borrow $13.8 million to upgrade their schools.

The consensus behind the movement to rebuild the state’s education systems is striking. Each of the local measures required at least two-thirds voter approval. The statewide Proposition 1A, needing only a simple majority, won with a lopsided 63% of the vote. It passed in 42 out of 58 counties, sweeping the Bay Area and Southern California.

No doubt the trend owes much to the revived state economy. But educators say it also signals that voters understand public education requires public investment.

After years of school neglect, “citizens and parents and legislators understand that there is a need to make some improvements in what we attempt to provide children,” said Terry Bradley, a school administrator in Fresno County who chairs a statewide group of educators and builders called the Coalition for Adequate School Housing. “And there’s a will to get that done.”

From universities to one-room schoolhouses, education officials throughout the state are angling for a piece of the construction bonanza. Speed pays: With so much money to be spent, a glut of projects could jack up construction prices.

The University of California, due to receive about $840 million over four years from the state bond measure, plans to move forward with new health science facilities in Los Angeles and seismic upgrades in Berkeley, Irvine, Davis, Riverside and San Francisco. The measure will also help launch a long-awaited 10th UC campus at Merced in the San Joaquin Valley.

The California Community Colleges and California State University systems, each expecting a share about equal to UC’s, are planning make-overs for many campuses often neglected in the state budget.

Consider Cal State Dominguez Hills. The modest, 12,000-student campus in Carson, near the intersection of the San Diego and Harbor freeways, was built in the 1960s during a boom era for public education. But the last state-funded building there, a gymnasium, opened in 1978.

With the new state bond money, Dominguez Hills officials expect to break ground soon on a $34-million, three-story complex including a computer center, student services hub and administrative headquarters. The administration now takes up the fifth floor of the main library.

The new building will become the largest on campus and is projected to be the largest single investment this school year for public higher education in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties.

“It’s extraordinarily significant,” said Herbert L. Carter, interim president of Cal State Dominguez Hills. “This campus has been here 30 years. We are still occupying buildings that were temporary buildings when we moved here 30 years ago. It turned out to be ‘30-year temporary.’ The quality of facilities that are common to other university campuses are finally beginning to be built here.”

But this story--like many others unfolding across California--isn’t just about steel girders and concrete. Building a college or school, educators note, represents something more than widening a road or laying a sewer pipe.

As Carter put it: “It also means an awful lot for this community. People will feel, I am certain, more kindly toward this institution. And it will help us in the attraction of students.”

Districts Face Explosive Growth

School districts, of course, don’t have to attract new students. They get them in droves every year as the population rises. With 5.7 million students, California’s K-12 system is the nation’s largest. Enrollment is likely to surpass 6 million in the next five years. Yet educators have complained repeatedly in recent years that construction and repairs have not kept pace. Stories abound at elementary and secondary schools of leaky roofs, rotting portable classrooms, overloaded utilities, clogged bathrooms and classrooms spilling into cafeterias and libraries.

Those complaints should now diminish, even if the new money fails to solve every trouble in a system with 8,000 campuses--some in deep urban poverty, some in suburban prosperity and still others in rural isolation.

Proposition 1A, three times larger than any bond measure in state history, earmarks $6.7 billion for public school repair and construction over four years. At least $2.9 billion will help districts buy land and put up new schools; at least $2.1 billion will help them repair or modernize existing schools. In addition, up to $700 million will be spent to help reduce elementary class size under a highly popular 2-year-old state program, and up to $1 billion will be set aside for schools with special financial hardships.

Because most of the state money will require matching funds, the best-positioned districts are those that have passed their own bond measures or collected substantial fees from housing developers.

So Los Angeles Unified, which still has not spent the bulk of the money authorized in its 1997 bond measure, expects to fare significantly better than it did the last time the state doled out construction money. Erik Nasarenko, a district spokesman, said two of the first projects in line are an $80-million high school in South Gate and a $35-million elementary school in Bell. In fast-growing southern Orange County, where developer fees have helped finance schools, Capistrano Unified and Saddleback Valley Unified districts have applied for more than $30 million in state building funds.

One of the biggest windfalls may land in San Diego County. There, voters approved four local bond measures this month. The San Diego City Unified measure works out to nearly $11,000 for each of the district’s 136,000 students. That’s a whopping sum, more than three times per student what Los Angeles Unified voters approved the year before.

Boom May Drive Up Contractors’ Prices

The day after the election, San Diego officials held a press conference at a local elementary school with four contractors who plan to compete for a new roofing project.

“Ecstatic is the word,” said Bruce Husson, a San Diego school administrator. “Having it pass with four-fifths of the voters endorsing it was a monumental event for us. We managed to inform the community about the dire condition of the schools, and drew the connection with them that you can’t raise test scores when the roofs are falling down.”

At a time when the public wants better scores and solid roofs, school administrators will face pressure for fast results.

State regulators this week expect to approve guidelines for Proposition 1A funding that reduce red tape in what had been a notoriously complex state building program. But administrators who seek to finish projects on time and on the cheap may find that the state’s tight construction market busts their budgets. Architects, construction managers and others who specialize in school building are already in high demand.

The experience of Fresno Unified and Clovis Unified offers a cautionary tale. The two districts, school administrator Bradley said, recently sought bids for an $11-million student technology complex. The lowest bid was $14 million. School trustees rejected all bids and sent the plans back to the drawing board.

For all the snags ahead, few analysts doubt that California is in for a school-building spree bigger than any since the postwar expansion of the 1950s and ‘60s.

“We haven’t seen anything like this since the baby boom, for sure,” said Bob Blattner, a legislative expert for School Services of California Inc., which tracks school bond measures.

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School Bond Binge

Twenty local school bond measures, worth a combined $2.3 billion, won passage on November 3 in addition to the $9.2 billion bond package state voters approved. The local measures required a two-thirds majority and the state measure a simple majority. Here are a dozen victorious local measures from Southern California and what they call for:

* Los Angeles County

School district: Inglewood Unified

Bond amont: $131 million

Purpose: Improve earthquake safety. Repair roofs, plumbing and sewers. Replace electrical and heating systems. Provide more classrooms, science facilities and computer labs.

*

School district: Lawndale Elementary

Bond amont: $26 million

Purpose: Improve technology. Repair and repalce plumbing, heating and electrical systems and leaky roofs. Build new classrooms. Improve disability access. Upgrade for earthquakes.

*

School district: Santa Monica-Malibu Unified

Bond amont: $42 million

Purpose: Buy and build new facilities to reduce class size. Upgrade science and computer labs. Remove asbestos and improve earthquake safety. Fix bathrooms and disability access.

*

School district: Torrance Unified

Bond amont: $42.5 million

Purpose: Build, acquire, renovate and maintain school facilities.

*

School district: Westside Union Elem., Antelope Valley

Bond amont: $14.7 million

Purpose: Reduce overcrowding. Improve technology. Repair schools.

* Orange County

School district: Buena Park Elementary

Bond amont: $13.8 million

Purpose: Upgrade technology, repair classrooms, plumbing, electrical system, playground equipment and lighting.

* Riverside County

School district: Beaumont Unified

Bond amont: $16 million

Purpose: Build, acquire, expand and improve schools.

* San Diego County

School district: Chula Vista Elementary

Bond amont: $95 million

Purpose: Repair roofs. Upgrade fire and disability access. Build and acquire new classrooms. Replace plumbing, heating, air conditioning and electrical systems.

*

School district: Lemon Grove Elementary

Bond amont: $12 million

Purpose: Upgrade technology, libraries. Improve safety, repair and replace old sewers, plumbing, ventilation and electrical systems.

*

School district: San Diego City Unified

Bond amont: $1.51 billion

Purpose: Repair roofs, drainage, heating, plumbing and electrical systems. Upgrade fire safety, disabled access, science labs, technology. build llibraries. Build and acquire schools, classrooms.

*

School district: San Pasqual Union

Bond amont: $1.7 million

Purpose: Build and renovate schools.

* Ventura County

School district: Conejo Valley Unified

Bond amont: $88 million

Purpose: Renovate and upgrade schools.

Source: School Services of California Inc.