School District Mulls $1.2 Billion Bond Vote

By Carla M. Collado
Staff Writer

The future of the Long Beach Unified School District’s aging infrastructure will lie in the hands of the LBUSD Board of Education this afternoon (Monday). That’s when the school board is scheduled to vote on whether to place a $1.2 billion construction bond measure on the Nov. 4 election ballot.

The proposed measure would need 55% voter approval and would impose a property owner tax of no more than $5 a month per $100,000 of assessed valuation, according to LBUSD Spokesman Chris Eftychiou. It also would make the school district eligible for about $286 million in matching state funds, he added.

(This means Long Beach voters could be voting on two bond measures that would add to property taxes. Mayor Bob Foster is asking the City Council to put a $571 million bond to repair the city’s infrastructure on the ballot, which would cost property owners $10 per month per parcel.)

The measure is the district’s response to a revised Facility Master Plan — approved by the school board in January 2008 — that identified school district buildings that need repairs and renovations, as well as new schools that should be built. The FMP process lasted 11 months and involved more than 200 planning committee meetings and numerous community dialogues and surveys, Eftychiou explained. After assessing roughly 8.5 million square feet of building space, the FMP showed that 38% of LBUSD schools need major renovations and 36% of schools need moderate renovations, among other findings.

“We do have an aging infrastructure and some buildings that are quite old,” Eftychiou said, adding that 80% of the district’s permanent buildings were built before 1970.

The bond measure would allow the district to: repair, renovate and build schools; retrofit schools for earthquake safety and handicap accessibility; upgrade computer labs, science labs, physical education facilities, auditoriums, libraries and music rooms; upgrade bathrooms and repair leaking roofs; and retrofit schools to be able to keep pace with ever-changing technologies, among other things.

Major projects involve building three new elementary schools, two new middle schools and three to six new high schools, Eftychiou said. These new high schools would be small, thematic schools (focusing on business, trade and technology, for instance) that would help alleviate enrollment pressure at the existing high schools, he explained.

The district also hopes to use the funding to reduce the number of portable classrooms, according to Eftychiou.

If passed, all bond expenditures would be monitored by an independent citizens’ oversight committee, would be subject to regular audits and would not be allowed to be spent on LBUSD administrator salaries and other district operating expenses.

Eftychiou said that, considering that California ranks 48th in the nation for per-student funding, the need for a bond measure such as this is great.

Today’s school board meeting starts at 4 p.m. at the district headquarters, 1515 Hughes Way.

For more information on the FMP, visit www.LBUSDfacilities.com.