This November, California voters will decide whether to a $10 billion school facilities bond to help districts and community colleges renovate and replace aging school buildings across the state.
But several say it will not come close to meeting many schools’ enormous facilities needs, particularly in rural districts — including several in San Diego County.
Proposition 2 would provide $8.5 billion for TK-12 school facilities and $1.5 billion for community college facilities. The measure needs a simple majority to .
State bonds generally do not directly raise taxes. Rather, the state typically sells bonds and pays them back with interest out of its general budget over the course of decades.
Voters have not ed a state school facilities bond since 2016, which provided $9 billion for K-12 schools and community colleges. The last proposed bond was for $15 billion and failed four years ago, when 53 percent of voters chose to reject it.
The state’s current pool of school facilities bond money is running out. Proposition 2 would help reduce an outstanding state bond waiting list of more than 870 school projects totaling $3.4 billion in bond money requests — including more than $225 million from San Diego County districts.
California education leaders say many schools are in dire need of replacement. More than a third of public K-12 schools did not meet minimum facility standards as of 2020, according to a report by Public Policy Institute of California.
Many school buildings were erected decades ago and are now outdated, deteriorating, out of compliance with accessibility and other requirements, and even unsafe or unhealthy, educators say.
In Vista Unified in North County, for example, district leaders are hoping to get more than $13 million in state funds to help replace buildings, many of them portables.
The classroom portables weren’t meant to be used for more than 20 years, but in many districts including Vista, they have been used a decade or more past their intended lifespan, said Assistant Superintendent Shawn Loescher. In several cases that means classrooms with musty smells, leaking roofs and gray carpet held together with tape.
Vista is working on replacing old school buildings to fix other problems, ranging from ADA-noncompliant bathrooms to lunch quads so small that students have to eat lunch in shifts.
“Environments do matter for children,” Loescher said. “This is not close to ideal.”
While educators generally agree on the need for more facilities funding, many critics say inequities are baked into the way California doles out school facilities funds.
The amount districts get is based on how much bond money school districts can raise on their own through their own local bond measures — so the system sends more money to wealthier school districts that have more property value within their boundaries and less to poorer districts. Critics have called it wealth-based discrimination by the state.
As a result, studies have found that the state has given disproportionately more to school districts with more property wealth, and less to low-wealth districts.
A study by the UC Berkeley Center for Cities and Schools found that the top quintile of school districts with the highest assessed property values and bonding capacity per student have received $11,008 in state school bond funding per student, compared to just $1,393 per student for the lowest quintile of districts.
Currently, the state pays for 60 percent of a facility project cost and expects districts to pay the other 40 percent.
Public Advocates, a law firm and advocacy group that has been a major voice calling for the state to reform how it funds school facilities, instead wants a sliding scale system: The poorest districts would get as much as a 95 percent state funding match while paying 5 percent, and the wealthiest districts would receive 5 percent from the state while paying 95 percent.
Proposition 2 would institute sliding scales, but much narrower ones — it would only pay districts between 50 and 65 percent, depending on the type of project, district’s property tax base and the percentage of students enrolled who are disadvantaged.
Factoring in the latter would give a boost to large school districts that enroll many low-income students but already have high property wealth, like Los Angeles Unified and San Diego Unified, Public Advocates noted.
Proposition 2’s new formula wouldn’t go far enough to fix the inequities of the current funding system, said Public Advocates deputy managing attorney Nicole Gon Ochi. The firm said it is considering suing the state over the measure’s distribution formula.
“We believe that the very minor changes to the distribution formula are not enough to overcome some of the constitutional problems,” Gon Ochi said.
District leaders and education advocates argue that system is unfair particularly to rural districts, which tend to have much less assessed property value within their boundaries and more trouble ing their own bonds.
Some rural district leaders say voters in their districts tend to be less likely to approve bond measures, as their electorates often include many political conservatives, low-income families and retirees on fixed incomes.
Rural and small districts also often lack the istrative staffing and expertise to work on facilities. For example, Borrego Springs Unified in eastern San Diego County, which serves about 345 students in three schools, has only four people working in its district office — none a facilities expert, said Superintendent Mark Stevens.
And even when a rural district does manage to get a bond ed, it often won’t come close to covering the costs to replace their aging buildings. That’s because rural districts often have far less assessed property value within their boundaries that they can tax to raise bond money — in other words, they have smaller maximum bond capacities.
Mountain Empire Unified, a vast school district spanning 660 square miles in far East County that serves more than 1,800 students, has suffered unsafe, non-compliant and failing buildings for years.
Many problems are concentrated at the high school, where students and staff deal regularly with alternately steamy and frigid classrooms, deteriorating walls that let in pests, a bumpy athletic field that causes players to trip, failing utilities and more. Similar facilities problems plague schools across the district, from a lack of clean drinking water to leaking roofs and ADA-noncompliant pathways.
Mountain Empire narrowly ed a $15 million bond in 2018. But that amount was only enough to fund new facilities for its middle school. District s estimate it would cost as much as $65 million to redo the high school alone.
The district tried to another $20 million bond last spring, but it failed with 51 percent of the vote when it needed 55 percent.
“Some school districts are ing bonds, and those bonds are putting in turf fields … and pools and theaters. I’m just trying to get clean and reliable drinking water and a building that is structurally sound for students to be in,” said Superintendent Patrick Keeley.
Borrego Springs Unified has ed just one bond in half a century, Stevens said.
Its only bond ed in 2018 and raised $8.6 million — enough to replace the high school’s failing sewer and electrical systems, replace two portable classrooms and create a safe drop-off zone for the elementary school, and place perimeter fencing around all its campuses, among other projects, he said.
But those funds are now spent, and the district still needs major renovations to the elementary school’s electrical, water and sewer systems, as well as its kitchens, athletic fields, gymnasium and locker rooms, Stevens said. And between COVID-19 and rising construction costs, the district had to dip into general operations funds just to finish the projects begun under the bond measure.
The most Borrego Springs could ever raise through its own bond measure is $13 million. But Stevens estimates the district needs twice that to pay for everything it needs.
“The bonds that are ed are not large enough to fulfill the increasing needs of the district,” Stevens wrote in an email.
The amounts rural districts can raise pale in comparison to, say, San Diego Unified, the state’s second-largest district in of enrollment and arguably the county’s most successful at getting bonds ed.
From 2008 to 2022, San Diego Unified raised $11.5 billion through four bond measures. The most recent one, Measure U, was approved two years ago by 65 percent of voters — well above the 55 percent needed to .
San Diego Unified has also collected at least $592 million in state school bond money over the past two decades, according to state records. It has pending applications on the state’s waitlist to receive an additional $60.8 million in matching funds for facilities projects.
“San Diego Unified has sought out state funding opportunities to maximize the district’s investments in quality educational facilities,” said San Diego Unified facilities director Lee Dulgeroff in a statement. “The district will continue to pursue funding opportunities that benefit San Diego Unified students.”
If a district cannot raise bond funds on its own, they can still get state aid by applying for what’s called financial hardship. But rural district leaders say it’s a long and complicated process that often requires them to front money and staff time to put together construction plans before even submitting the application.
Financial hardship also provides relatively limited help in California — the program only makes up about 7 percent of state school bond funds that are awarded, Public Advocates found.
Proposition 2 would raise the maximum bonding capacity for which a district can qualify for financial aid from $5 million to $15 million.
Despite everything, school districts including several rural ones say they Proposition 2 — they’ll take any chance to get any money for school facilities, which they say are a constant under-funded need.
“Funding school facilities is important, so if this is the bill that is put forth, then that’s what we have to get behind,” Keeley said.
