The Hermosa school board will decide this month whether or not to put a new bond measure before voters in November, or wait until June, or possibly November of next year.
The board’s attempt last November to pass a $54 million school bond, Measure Q, failed by 32 votes.
School board president Patti Ackerman recently advised the board to wait until next year. The district hopes to replace and remodel North School to accommodate approximately 500 students. The school is presently leased to the Children’s Journey Learning Center preschool, which has approximately 200 students.
“Waiting until June is the best option,” Ackerman said at the June 22 school board meeting. “I want to have the time to see what North would really look like … I don’t think we can get that information before a November election. We have one shot to get it right.”
Superintendent Pat Escalante said there were other advantages to waiting until June, such as capitalizing on strong voter turnout for the presidential primaries.
Others on the school board want the bond to go before voters as soon as possible to more quickly alleviate overcrowding at View and Valley schools.
“The time is now,” school board member Lisa Claypoole said at the June 22 meeting. “We need to pass the bond measure. It’s time for the community to help … We need a new facility.”
School board member Carleen Beste also said she favors putting the bond measure on the November ballot.
Due to filing deadlines, the board must act by the end of July if it wants the bond on the November ballot. If it does, subsequent meetings will be scheduled for community input.
Even opponents of last year’s bond measure acknowledge the need to remedy the district’s overcrowding crisis. The district’s 1,460 K-8 students are crammed into just two campuses, at View and Valley schools. The schools are designed for fewer than 1,000 students.
Temporary classrooms include portable trailers in the parking lots and partitioned theater stages and multi-purpose rooms. Bond money is also needed to update the plumbing and electrical systems.
Last November’s bond would have charged residents an additional $29.50 in property taxes per $100,000 of assessed home valuation.
One of the biggest concerns among ‘No on Q’ voters was that the district didn’t make clear how that money was to be used. The school board said that reopening North could cost between $14.8 million and $28.2 million. Cost estimates for upgrading View and Valley were similarly vague.
“This $54 million bond is the maximum allowable district debt. It is not the cost of building classrooms,” Marie Rice, chairwoman of the anti-Measure Q group Committee to Restore Hermosa Schools, wrote in a letter to the school board two weeks before the vote. “Measure Q is a laundry list of all possible expenditures the school board can make with no guarantee of how bond funds will be spent or what will actually be accomplished.”
Rice declined to comment for this story.
Angela Jones, the district’s business manager, acknowledged that construction costs need to be spelled out more clearly this time.
“We didn’t have costs when we went out for the bond [last time],” she said. “That’s what we’re working towards.”
Measure Q opponents were also concerned that a part of Valley Park, which is next to North School and owned by the district, was going to be paved over for a parking lot. This time, the board is not planning to build on the park. There is discussion, however, to develop a slope of land between the school and the park, currently covered by ice plant.
“We’re not encroaching at all onto the park,” said Blair Ripplinger, a principal at Pasadena architectural firm Gkkworks, which has been hired by the school board to create a map for North.
But avoiding the park creates a host of new challenges.
The district would need to fit all of its facilities — a library, classrooms, play area, drop-off area and parking lot — onto a smaller footprint. The school would also be limited to two-stories in some areas and one story in other areas, so it blends in with the neighborhood.
This approach would require North to be razed.
“By taking the parking out of the park, ‘modernizing’ no longer exists,” Escalante said at a recent meeting.
One workaround would be an underground parking lot. But Ackerman said she’s concerned about its cost. “I have major financial concerns with underground parking,” Ackerman said at a recent meeting. “What’s most important to me is the cost.”
Many of the 400 people polled earlier this year cited cost as their reason for opposing last year’s bond, according to Isom Advisors, which conducted the survey. Many reported that they’d support a $23 or $19 tax increase.
Hermosa’s school taxes are just a fraction of those in neighboring communities. Hermosa residents pay $17.97 per $100,000 of assessed valuation annually, Manhattan Beach residents pay $70.05 and those in Redondo pay $92.42.
Ripplinger said his firm is still awaiting geotechnical surveys that will affect the cost of going underground.
“We just have to work around what we get from the surveyor,” Ripplinger told the board.
Neighbors are also awaiting the results of a traffic study for all three schools. It will be presented to the school board this month.
In addition to concerns about North, the school board will also address the specific needs of View and Valley at meetings this month. The board has the ability to propose a separate bond measure to pay for upgrades at View and Valley, rather than lump those upgrades in with a bond that would finance the reopening of North.
Bond supporters appear to be better organized this time around. A group calling itself the Hermosa Educational Renewal Operation (HERO) was formed in May with the goal of “addressing the facilities’ needs of the Hermosa Beach School District.”
Former city councilman George Schmeltzer said he’s hoping voters don’t let their idea of perfection get in the way of making progress.
“For me, it doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be good,” he said.
