School Bonds

For the second time in six months, school officials in Thousand Oaks and Moorpark will ask voters to approve more than $100 million in school bonds, mostly for modernization and renovation projects and to accommodate enrollment growth.

Voters in the two communities in November turned down the measures, which require two-thirds majorities, by slim margins. The measures will appear on the ballot April 14 in a special election.

Measure V would authorize the issuance of $97 million in bonds for the Conejo Valley Unified School District while Measure W would provide $16 million for the Moorpark Unified School District.

Superintendents Jerry Gross of the Conejo Valley district and Thomas Duffy of the Moorpark district recently discussed the bond measure and what the money would accomplish.

Question: You are asking voters for the second time in six months to approve a multimillion-dollar bond measure. Is there a great deal of urgency attached to these efforts?

Gross: Our district has had millions of dollars in maintenance and major repairs. We don’t get adequately funded for it, as no district does. What really brought it home was the rains we had this winter after the bond issue failed in November. We had big needs but the rain pointed out we had major leak problems. And because of what they call percolation effect, a lot of our parking lots and playing fields have surfaces that are asphalt, which have basically destroyed themselves this winter. That is what presses us forward, plus the fact that we know, based on the building we are now doing, that the steel prices are going up dramatically. This is pushing us forward because even though we are spending $100,000 to get this on the ballot, we will save that many times over with respect to inflation rates on products and services that we are going to have to buy.

Duffy: We serve children through people working in facilities that are safe and appropriate for the various kinds of educational activities that go on. With the approval of the voters of this measure, I will be able to initiate work at Flory Elementary, Chaparral Middle and Moorpark High schools. To give you perspective, we opened Moorpark High with 800 students. There are 1,800 students at Moorpark High today. We are able to adequately house 1,800 students, but we are growing each year. The student population coming up from grade 8 into grade 9 will be greater than what we are losing in grade 12. That is happening year after year. We need classrooms, we need paved areas for parking and we need to expand, so there is an urgency. In addition, at Flory School, which was built in 1938, we have a plan for modernizing facilities.

Q: So Dr. Gross, a lot of this money will now be going for repair work? Is that because of the rain or was it originally intended for repair work?

Gross: Roughly $67 million of the amount was for rehabilitation and modernization, and much of that was listed for repair work. We’re in the process of getting bids on $1.5 million of critical and faulty roofing repairs that we won’t have funds to pay for unless the bond passes. It is critical that we get that work started in June, as soon as the classes end, because if we miss the summer window, we will go through another year of leaks and floods.

Q: Dr. Duffy, this bond issue is about dealing with students who are on campus in Moorpark now? And the future is another issue.?

Duffy: Yes, future growth or any future development is another issue.

Q: Dr. Gross, is any of this money earmarked for additional classrooms in the Conejo district?

Gross: We do have 30 classrooms to be paid out of the bonds proceeds to expand the class-size reduction program. Even though we constructed 75 new classrooms in the last year and a half, we don’t have enough room so that class-size reduction has been able to be fully implemented.

Q: Do you have an advisory committee set up to look into how this money will be spent?

Gross: A committee is ready to go as soon as the bond passes and members will begin to give us input. We are going to begin right out of the box to get projects underway. The committee is made up of good people, ready to help, but they really want to serve [in] a watchdog capacity. That is what the voters told us in November, that we needed to consider that, and this time we are doing that. We are in a mode in this country of more participatory democracy. That seems to be where we are going.

Duffy: We haven’t talked about citizen advisory committees. I think people are comfortable with us. I recommend contracts for construction to the Board of Education and they’ve approved them.

We do have committees made up of parents, business people, community people who are interested in our district, and we’ve invited them to be a part of creating a strategic plan. Basically they came to the conclusion, as I did, that we need to do a general obligation bond. My point is that the committee will know what we are doing and we will keep them in the loop of communication.

The Board of Education is accountable to the public and I’m accountable to the public through the Board of Education. We are going to do with the bond money what we said we are going to do.

Q: If the bond doesn’t pass, what will you do?

Gross: More buckets placed around the classrooms and we take the limited budget. Incidentally, a state agency that works in Sacramento, called School Services in California, recently reviewed our budget and reported we are way above average in our commitment for deferred maintenance and our maintenance needs but the money from the state is just not there. So we sit here with decreased funding from the state, and that has been one of our problems. We are committed fully to spending as much as we can to do this, short of taking money out of the classrooms.

Duffy: I’m actively pursuing the state Legislature, but it is a 50-50 program. I have to come up with 50% of the cost of the schools. If a state bond gets on the ballot this year and passes, we can make our bond money go even further. But we need local support for our bond issue.

I’ve got five children in Moorpark schools, from first grade through 12th grade. I know what the needs are. I want my first-grader to be at a school that has adequate classrooms, to get the same quality education at Moorpark High that the children are getting today. Moorpark is an outstanding high school and it is outstanding because we pay attention to it, and the facilities are part of it.

Q: You’ve been criticized for spending thousands of dollars in taxpayer money for a special election when you could have waited a few weeks and put the issues on the June primary ballot. What is your response to that?

Gross: No. 1, the need is great. If we wait until June you’re going to miss the summer, and that’s when you are doing a lot of work. You can’t take a roof apart when a kid is in there.

No. 2, we know that interest rates are excellent right now. Las Virgenes got a 3.5% rate on their bonds and saved themselves half a million dollars in taxes. So we are trying to think of that as well.

No. 3, there’s inflation and the price of steel to consider, for example.

Finally, every district around is involved, it seems, in refurbishing their schools. We have to worry if our schools can reflect the quality of the residential / commercial land and the commercial construction in our community, and right now, they don’t. We think the community and kids deserve to have schools that fit the community, a certain quality.

Duffy: I have a window called the summer. That is the time when we go crazy trying to get things done because we can go into school sites without interrupting the educational process, and we don’t have to worry about children being around equipment and getting hurt. That window of opportunity is important. With an April approval, I get to move forward on needs at three sites, and if I know that on April 15 these funds are available to me, then I know from April 15 to June 12 I’m certain to get approval from the state architect.

Q: Do you think in retrospect you didn’t do a good enough job in selling this bond issue last time around?

Gross: You have to remember that we had a very contentious City Council recall on the ballot. Of the seven or eight bonds that were on the ballot in our community last time, in November we were the only ones that didn’t pass except Moorpark, which also had a contentious issue on the ballot. The rest seemed to sail right through. We think the voters might have gone to the polls in somewhat of a bad mood.

Duffy: I thought we did a good job putting information out there for the public. The response I received from many members of the public when we lost by the 58 or 60 votes was, “You know, I just thought everybody would support it; I didn’t get a chance to vote that day.” We’ve been criticized for sending voter registration forms home, but there are now 300 more voters who are registered. They may vote “yes,” they may vote “no,” but it is a positive.

Q: Is that legal?

Duffy: It is well within the law, although somebody reported us to the district attorney. People get emotional about this. We were very careful in regard to the information we sent home. We had an attorney review the information we were sending home.