San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
S.D. UNIFIED SEEKS APPROVAL OF $3.2B BOND MEASURE
Measure, the 4th since 2008, would fund facilities, other needs
San Diego Unified School District is asking voters to approve a $3.2 billion bond measure that would be the district’s fourth in 14 years.
The bond, on the November ballot as Measure U, would pay for many of the same kinds of facilities projects being funded by three existing bonds, such as repairing, renovating and constructing school buildings, improving school security, purchasing classroom technology and adding an alphabet soup of campus features, ranging from athletic fields to science labs to energy-efficient fixtures.
There are two new things this bond measure would also pay for, according to school district officials: affordable housing for employees, and facilities specifically designed for transitional kindergarten, a new grade level for 4year-olds that the state is requiring public schools to offer by 2025. Such facilities could include classrooms with bathrooms in them or playgrounds designed for younger children, the district said.
San Diego Unified has already gotten three bond measures totaling $8.3 billion approved by voters since 2008. The latest one, Measure YY, was approved by voters four years ago, and there are still billions of bond dollars that haven’t been spent yet from those measures.
Measure U would essentially replace Proposition Z, the district’s earliest existing bond measure, which is expiring this fall, said Lee Dulgeroff, the district’s chief facilities officer, in an interview. Because it would take Proposition Z’s place, the district says Measure U won’t increase current tax rates. Measure U will cost property owners 6 cents per $100 of assessed value.
The total principal and interest that would have to be repaid is estimated at $7.3 billion.
There’s no clear rule as to how often school districts need to pass bond measures, said Julien Lafortune, an education research fellow at Public Policy Institute of California.
But large districts like San Diego Unified are generally more
likely to propose bonds more frequently — not just because they have more buildings, but because they have more property wealth they can draw upon for taxes, Lafortune said. And because families in such areas have more wealth, they may be more willing to take on taxes to pay for school bonds, he said.
Measure U would fund facilities projects over the course of 10 years and issue about $330 million in bonds per year, according to the district.
Despite its existing bond measures, the district still doesn’t have enough resources to properly upkeep its facilities, Dulgeroff said. He said the district has a hefty task of building upkeep, as it works to maintain 2,000 acres of property, 185 schools and 15 million square feet of school buildings that are on average 56 years old.
And even while the district has been renovating and building new facilities, the district’s buildings — including ones recently upgraded or built — are collectively deteriorating to the tune of $240 million a year, Dulgeroff said. The district currently has about $753 million in repair, replacement and renovation needs, according to the district.
If the district doesn’t keep investing in school facilities’ upkeep with more bond money, Dulgeroff said, the deterioration will accelerate and become more expensive to fix.
“In order just to stay — to tread water, to keep our buildings where they are, we need to spend significant funds,” Dulgeroff said. “If you look around San Diego and you see the (districts) that don’t pass bond measures, they have facilities issues that have come up.”
Building conditions are measured by what’s called a facility condition index, a percentage number that equals the cost of existing repair costs divided by the total estimated replacement value. The lower the index, the better: An index higher than 10 percent is considered to be poor, while between 6 and 10 percent is fair and 5 percent or under is good.
Under its three existing bond measures, the district has improved its facility condition index from 22 percent eight years ago to 11 percent as of June 2021, and the district has been on track to reach 10 percent by this year, according to the district’s latest maintenance plan.
Under that plan without Measure U, the district’s index is expected to continue to drop to below 6 percent by 2029; after that, the index is expected to start worsening again. It’s unclear what the index would be with Measure U.
What’s more, new school buildings and facilities revitalize communities and make students feel proud to attend their schools, district officials said. That’s important to the district as officials try to increase the numbers of families who choose to attend their neighborhood schools rather than head to other district schools or leave the district altogether.
“We should be proud of the work that we’ve done over the past decade,” said school board Trustee Richard Barrera, who has sat on the board since 2008, at a July board meeting. “We’ve shown the taxpayers and the voters that we delivered on exactly what we said we were gonna do when we went out for previous bond measures. We’re saying, ‘Let’s continue to work, let’s continue to get to the point that all of our facilities meet the needs of our students.’”
San Diego Unified leaders have also pointed to the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting and the need for school security as a reason to pass Measure U.
“We need more resources in order to secure our campuses and make them safe against all types of threats,” Dulgeroff said.
Several people have spoken in favor of Measure U at recent board meetings, including charter school leaders whose schools would benefit or have benefited from bond projects.
The San Diego County Taxpayers Association endorsed Measure U because district officials told them it would prioritize and “fasttrack” school security measures, said association CEO Haney Hong. School districts also need money for transitional kindergarten facilities because the state is telling schools to add a new grade level but not providing additional money to do it, Hong said.
But Measure U isn’t perfect, Hong said. In particular, he is hesitant about the staff affordable housing.
“It seems a little questionable as to whether this is the intention of Prop. 39 bonds,” Hong said, referring to the state law that made it easier for school districts to pass bond measures. “If it becomes just another source of money to increase teacher pay, that’s when the taxpayers association will really start to dislike these.”
The details are far from set in stone, but San Diego Unified is tentatively planning to build about 500 affordable housing units for teachers and staff at its current district office in University Heights, Dulgeroff said.
In the next few years, the district will move its central office to a property it recently purchased in Kearny Mesa, freeing up space in University Heights to build teacher housing and other community features, Dulgeroff said.
A growing number of school districts in California have been pursuing employee housing as a way of addressing school staffing troubles.
“That’s an important component of the bond measure, to be able to attract and retain the staff we need to run our schools,” Dulgeroff said of the affordable housing.
Measure U has drawn backlash from district critics who say San Diego Unified is asking for billions more dollars from taxpayers to pursue projects it should have already completed with the three previous bond measures.
Becca Williams, a conservative who is running for the San Diego Unified School Board, said she’s not opposed to bond measures in principle, but is opposed to Measure U because the district already has billions of dollars not yet spent from previous bond measures.
“The fact that San Diego Unified is going back to voters to ask for more funds for security improvements is an admission that the school campuses are not safe after promising enhancements over the past three bond measures,” Williams said.
Stephen Rosen, a charter school board member whose nonprofit called the Aristotle Foundation aims to hold the district accountable on spending, criticized the district’s characterization of Measure U as a security measure a few months after the Uvalde, Texas, shooting.
“In my opinion, they’re shamelessly using school shootings as an emotional trigger to get people to approve the bond,” Rosen said.
Rosen said he also worries that property owners who pay for Measure U in their taxes could pass the costs on to low-income renters already struggling with San Diego’s high housing costs.
Out of the $8.3 billion of bond funding the district has gotten approved since 2008, San Diego Unified has spent $121 million on school security projects so far, Dulgeroff reported during a June school board meeting. With the current bond measures, the district plans to spend $250 million total on security by 2024.
Those numbers, however, don’t include additional security features that have been integrated into new school buildings constructed under the current bond measures, said district spokesperson Maureen Magee.
A review of the district’s annual bond reports over the past five years show that several schools got new fencing thanks to existing bond measures, but most bond projects completed during that time have not been security-related.
Some of the most common bond projects have been new HVAC systems, renovated and new classroom buildings, new roofs, parking lot improvements, new solar power systems such as carports, new schools including the Logan Memorial Educational Campus and a school at Civita in Mission Valley, and athletic facilities improvements, such as joint-use fields and stadium and gym upgrades.
The school security projects the district has used its existing bond measures to fund fall mainly within three categories, according to Dulgeroff: building perimeter fencing, creating a single secure point of entry for campuses and installing emergency communication systems. Measure U would be used to go further and install security cameras, better door hardware and more and higher fencing, among other things, he said.
“The previous measures did do some hardware and cameras; we have a little bit on every campus. But it doesn’t cover the range of needs. We really do need more resources,” Dulgeroff said.
Measure U requires 55 percent voter approval to pass and will appear on the ballot for the Nov. 8 general election.
It’s costing San Diego Unified $700,000 to put the measure to voters, Magee said, which will be reimbursed to the district if the measure succeeds.
kristen.taketa@sduniontribune.com