Schools Need This Compromise

It’s hard to tell whether a Republican or a Democrat wrote the current version of the $9-billion school bond ballot measure that is awaiting action in the Legislature. It is a compromise--trading off statewide school construction money for limits on the fees that communities can charge housing developers--and it makes no one completely happy. That may be its genius.

The measure has the strong backing of Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), who argues that it at least gets the job done, especially for physically crumbling urban districts. The Senate’s Democratic leaders should get behind it as well, for this is a bill that Republicans would grudgingly agree to and Gov. Pete Wilson has said he would sign.

The bond measure would provide the matching funds that localities need to build new schools and rehab old ones. Hardship cases that did not have local matching funds--like the school districts in Orange County, where no local school bond measure has passed in two decades--would also qualify for some funds. The measure includes $2.5 billion for higher education, to build classrooms in the University of California system, the Cal State University system and the community colleges, all of which are bracing for an enrollment surge as the children of the baby boomers arrive.

A big part of the original Democratic proposal, reducing the approval threshold for local school bonds from two-thirds of voters to an ordinary majority, has been abandoned in this compromise. A Republican demand has been added: fees charged to housing developers for local school construction would be capped at $1.93 per square foot of construction, a fraction of what is now charged in some areas.

Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) has yet to give his approval to the current version, but he must realize that the old Democratic version never had a chance. Burton needs to put on his pragmatist’s hat and support Villaraigosa’s compromise.

It’s unclear just what the senators want, although Burton has talked about a provision that would require developers to pass on their savings to home buyers. If such a provision can be written to the satisfaction of the other parties, fine. If not, the lawmakers should waste no more time and should pass the pending measure for the November ballot. If the California voters approve, the politicians won’t get exactly what they want, to paraphrase the Rolling Stones, but many students will get what they need.