Ventura Testing Sentiments for a June School Bond Election

VENTURA — As Mayor Jack Tingstrom remembers it, the whole thing got started a year ago, when he put in his first phone call to Supt. Joseph Spirito.

“I was listening to the people of this city, and they were telling me the most important thing is the education of their kids,” Tingstrom said. “So I went to the head educator, and I said, ‘If we are going to bring this city up to standards, and make it a great place, we’ve got to make the schools better. This struggle could be better if we worked together.’ ”

Spirito remembers marching up to City Hall to talk to Tingstrom.

“He was sitting in his office and I said, ‘Jack, as you know, we have a problem and I know you’ve been calling me and asking what are some of the things we can do to resolve it,’ ” Spirito said.

So the two sat down and had a cup of coffee.

The result of that cup of coffee--the first of many--has been an uncommon partnership between the city and the school district.

Last August, Tingstrom and Spirito pulled together a committee drawn from groups as diverse as teachers, parents, Chamber of Commerce members and developers to hammer out a long-range plan for Ventura schools.

For four months they met to hone their vision. And somewhere along the way, these brainstorming sessions evolved into something larger: a historic cooperation between the city and the school board, and a united campaign to push for a school bond measure.

The details of the bond are still hazy. The school district hasn’t determined the price tag, nor have officials announced for certain that they will seek a bond measure. But the district is examining the possibility of placing a bond measure on the ballot as early as June.

In an act meant to cement and highlight that cooperation, the Ventura Unified School District and the City Council will hold a joint meeting Monday to discuss the committee’s ambitious long-range school facilities plan.

“It is very historic,” said Ventura Assistant City Manager Steve Chase, who has worked behind the scenes at City Hall helping to orchestrate the cooperation. “It is very clear to the city fathers that we can no longer continue to look at City Hall as something that is independent from the schools, and vice versa. We are interdependent.”

Members of the committee will present the plan, which recommends $120 million to build at least two elementary schools, a middle-school and magnet high school and make needed renovations by 2010. To finance the school construction, the 19-member committee recommends selling the district’s surplus property, charging developer fees and pursuing a bond measure.

But passing a bond measure can be difficult.

Since 1986, Ventura County schools have put 13 local bonds before voters. Only five have passed, and just one passed in the past five years. As Camarillo and other districts made their bid to pass such bond measures, Ventura sat tight.

But Tingstrom and Spirito began to feel in recent months that in Ventura the time was right. And that with cooperation, they had a shot at passing a bond.

“You always watch them [other districts] like hawks,” said Spirito, who only a year ago told The Times that Ventura could not pass a bond issue. “They kind of give you a clue as to what the general feeling is.”

Spirito also thought he was beginning to detect a change.

When the Oxnard High School District’s $57-million bond measure passed last November, Spirito was heartened.

What happened in Oxnard mattered because in Ventura the school-overcrowding situation was growing worse. In recent years development exploded in east Ventura, placing greater strain on already crammed campuses.

The situation grew so serious the city stopped granting new housing permits for a year. And the city delayed making a decision on whether to increase Ventura’s population cap until it could see the school committee’s recommendations.

Then came the turning point.

At Buena High School, in east Ventura, crowding became so severe that students said they had trouble opening their lockers between classes. The district announced last February that nearly 200 students would be bused across town to Ventura High School, causing a local furor. Displaced Buena students and their parents turned out to ask why developers continued building when there was no space for the students who already lived there.

“Developers came to the Planning Commission to ask for help,” Spirito said. “Then all the parents came and beat up on the Planning Commission. That’s when everyone realized we had to work together.”

By cooperating, the school district could get better schools to accommodate a growing student enrollment. With good schools, the city could attract businesses and ensure healthy economic growth. And by putting the school crowding problem to rest, the city could authorize additional building permits for developers.

But the change had to start with the schools.

And the schools needed help. Ventura’s schools are outdated and bursting at the seams. This school year, enrollment shot up by more than 1,000 students, far exceeding the district’s best estimates.

Gov. Pete Wilson’s class-size reduction initiative, which beginning last September pared classes to 20 students or less, only exacerbated the space crunch. The newest school in Ventura is 29 years old; the average elementary school classroom is 42 years old. Eight of 17 elementary schools are over capacity.

Such outdated, overcrowded schools can stifle a community’s economic development, said David Kleitsch, Ventura’s director of economic development.

“To retain and expand the employment base and the economy, a community has to provide a quality of life that is attractive and makes people want to live here. Schools are critical,” Kleitsch said.

Officials cite Amgen, in Thousand Oaks, as a business that uses Conejo Valley’s excellent schools as a selling point to lure new employees.

Over the months, the cooperation between the city of Ventura and the school system thrived, and drew attention from around the state.

“All eyes are watching,” Chase said, noting he has been fielding questions through contacts at the League of California Cities and from the city of Fremont, where city and school officials are just beginning to cooperate.

In an era of shrinking school funds from the state, communities all over California are left to foot an ever larger share of the education bill, making cooperation between agencies critical.

When Proposition 13 was passed in 1978, school districts could no longer place bond measures before voters because of the proposition’s strict limits on raising property taxes to repay the borrowed cash.

Proposition 46, passed in 1986, made it possible for districts to ask voters for money for schools through general obligation bonds. But such bonds require a two-thirds majority.

Statewide, bonds have become a major way to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars needed for school building and renovation. But the barriers are formidable. Gov. Wilson has put forward a proposal to allow bond measures to pass with just 50% voter approval, but for now they still take at least two-thirds approval.

“What legislator would ever win an election if they have to have two-thirds [vote] to win. Yet in their infinite wisdom they mandate us to get a two-thirds vote on something that is very difficult to get, especially with taxes,” Spirito said.

But there are few other alternatives to bonds available to raise the money necessary to overhaul schools.

In Ventura, the committee has recommended selling some of the school system’s 80 acres of vacant land in the eastern end of the city to raise money, and proposed several office sites that could also be converted or sold. But the money generated from selling those properties would still fall short of the $120 million needed for school construction, Councilman Ray Di Guilio said.

“I think the school system would confirm that the majority of the funds for school buildings will not come from the sale of their property, but it would be good to complement the bond measure,” Di Guilio said.

On the eve of Monday’s joint meeting, educators and city officials caution that the battle for the future of Ventura’s schools has just begun.

Dale Scott & Co. Inc., hired by the school district to help it pass a bond measure, intends to conduct a phone survey in the next two weeks to determine whether the community agrees there is a need to build more schools, and would be willing to support a bond measure to do so. And from now through spring, Spirito plans at least four public hearings to drum up community support for a still-undetermined amount of bonds.

In the meantime, Tingstrom and Spirito are sticking together--even going so far as holding a joint press conference Friday with Tingstrom addressing journalists via a speaker phone from out of town.

“Joe and I both agree on this, and we did not waver. Everywhere we went it was a partnership. Everywhere he appeared, I appeared,” Tingstrom said earlier in the week. “There will be a bond issue that we will have to address. We are going to be that strong again.”

MacGregor is a Times staff writer; Hong is a Times correspondent.