Bond Issue to Finance More Schools in Poway Barely Misses Passing

Voters narrowly rejected a $58.4-million bond issue Tuesday that would have paid to build new schools in the Poway Unified School District through property taxes.

The measure received a solid majority but failed by less than one percentage point to garner the two-thirds needed for passage.

The final unofficial tally showed that 11,698 people, or 65.9%, voted to approve the bond, and 6,046, or 34.1%, voted against it.

School officials and other bond proponents stressed that the district, which has one of the best academic records in the state, could lose its excellence if class sizes continue to rise and if portable classrooms, which now house about 4,000 of the district’s 20,000 students, became a permanent fixture.

Double sessions, year-round school or intercommunity busing of students are possibilities without the money, proponents said.

The $58.4 million in bonds would have built a high school in Rancho Bernardo that proponents said was needed to ease crowding at Mt. Carmel High in Rancho Penasquitos and Poway High. Both schools’ enrollments are 50% above capacity.

Three elementary schools also would be built--in Rancho Bernardo, Rancho Penasquitos and Sabre Springs.

Opposition to the bond issue was not united, but school officials remained concerned that a silent majority opposed the proposal because all of the improvements were to be in rapidly growing new communities that, although within the Poway district, are part of the city of San Diego.

The bond would cost the owner of a $150,000 home in the district an estimated $11.33 more in property taxes the first year. That amount would be reduced to about $6 a year within five years of the bond’s passage.

Though none of the improvements would be within the city of Poway, residents there were assured that crowding in their classrooms would be eased by bond-generated construction.

Another $20 million generated from development fees in the fast-growing San Diego suburbs is to be used by the school district to build another middle school in the area.

Proponents of the bond issue said no help can be expected from the state. A backlog of more than $5 billion in requests from school districts with more pressing problems than Poway makes it unlikely that the district will receive any more aid in the foreseeable future.

Times staffer Kathie Bozanich also contributed to this report.