Fallbrook to Try School Bonds Again

After three rejections from voters in a year, trustees of the Fallbrook Unified High School District plan to place another bond measure on the November ballot that, though scaled down, would help ease severe overcrowding at the district’s high school.

Trustees agreed informally at a Tuesday workshop to seek voter approval of a bond issue that would be roughly half of the $20-million measure sought in the June 2 election. That measure, Proposition N, failed to gain the two-thirds support required, receiving only 55.1% of the vote.

Proposition N would have provided $10.7 million for improvements to 25-year-old Fallbrook High School, and supplied $9.3 million to begin developing a new high school on a Gird Road site the district already owns.

The November bond measure now proposed by the board would only fund improvements to the existing high school.

“We do need the facilities at the present school upgraded, until such a time when the community will support a second high school,” school board President P.K. Martin said Wednesday.

Martin said district officials are checking with a consultant to determine the size of the November bond measure. The measure’s exact amount will be announced and a formal vote placing it on the ballot will be taken at a June 30 school board meeting.

Deadline for placing a bond measure on the November ballot is July 2.

In addition to the voters’ rejection of the bond measure earlier this month, bond measures in June and November of 1990 also failed to gain two-thirds support. (A bond measure for a new high school in 1978 also was defeated.)

Among the improvements needed at the high school are renovation of the library, expansion and renovation of locker rooms, construction of a new gymnasium and construction of a new band room, school officials said.

Much of the opposition to the June 2 bond measure came from residents who objected to the school district putting both the improvements to the existing school and development of the new school in one bond issue. They said they preferred separate bond measures for the two projects.

Residents in the Gird Road area have opposed plans for the new campus, saying it would increase traffic.

Proposition N would have added $8.43 a year for every $100,000 of assessed valuation to a property owner’s tax bill, or $14.83 for the average property owner.

Fallbrook High School was built in 1967 with a capacity of 1,200 students. With portable classrooms, its rated capacity rose to 1,800. However, in the school year just completed, 2,300 students were squeezed into its classrooms, and 2,600 are expected to enroll this fall. More than 4,000 students are expected by the end of the decade.