School districts work to meet growth demands

By: JENNIFER KABBANY - Staff Writer | Saturday, July 23, 2005 10:27 PM PDT ∞

One new school has already opened and six more are on the way with the beginning of the 2005-06 school year in Southwest County.

Located in the Temecula, Murrieta, Lake Elsinore and Menifee districts, the schools are meant to keep up with home building and keep down the number of overcrowded campuses.

As housing developments sprout like weeds in Riverside County, growth is one of the biggest issues school districts are facing. A government report released last week shows the county added about 30,000 houses between July 2003 and July 2004, the most of any county in California.

The county welcomes about 16,500 new students each year, an average of 44 a day, said Riverside County Office of Education spokesman Rick Peoples. Additional teachers are hired at a pace of about 1,500 annually, he said.

The seven new schools in Southwest County will serve nearly 4,300 students, district officials said.

To build those campuses and prepare for more school construction in the future, districts in the region are applying for state construction money, raising developer fees, creating community facilities districts and asking taxpayers to finance bond issues in the constant battle to meet the school-construction demand.

"Growth produces all kinds of strains that the cities and the county have to keep up with, and schools are just one of them," said Andy McCue, managing director of the Edward J. Blakely Center for Sustainable Suburban Development at UC Riverside. "The school district has to grow, it has to find the teachers, it has to find the space."

Some principals of the seven new schools in the region said they are excited to get started. The new housing developments that either surround or flank their campus are a constant reminder of the region's growth and need for new schools, they said.

"Growth is tremendous," said Lorie Reitz, principal of Lake Elsinore Unified School District's new high school, Lakeside High, which opens in August. "(The area) north of the lake is absolutely exploding."

Lakeside High will relieve overcrowding at the district's other two high schools, Temescal Canyon and Elsinore High, which were rapidly approaching 3,000 students each, she said.

Oak Meadows Elementary in the Menifee Union School District opened in July in the midst of hundreds of new homes. The district runs year-round and its first semester begins in July.

Principal Linda Chirico said Oak Meadows eases overcrowding at her former post, Callie Kirkpatrick Elementary, which lost about half its enrollment to the new school.

"When I left Callie in May, there were 1,230 students," Chirico said. "We are starting with 680 students. If we weren't opening right now, the children would have to be assimilated into other schools, so it definitely helps with overcrowding."

This scenario is being repeated in the Murrieta Valley Unified School District, which will open Antelope Hills Elementary next month. Principal Karen Briski said the new school will help create more elbow room at Tovashal Elementary.

"Tovashal's student population this year was over 1,000," Briski said. "We are pulling probably 350 students from Tovashal."

Another elementary school opening within the Lake Elsinore district, and three within the Temecula Valley Unified School District, also are part of meeting the growth demand and student population boom, officials said.

And this year's seven new schools won't be the last from districts in Southwest County.

Temecula is preparing to open another elementary school in 2006 and another high school in 2008. Murrieta plans to open two elementary schools, one middle school and one high school within the next five years.

Lake Elsinore will probably start looking for land to build a fourth high school in a few years for a possible 2012 opening, Reitz said. Menifee is also building another elementary school.

To pay for all this construction, school districts will turn to state funds, developer fees and residents. Although Murrieta residents have passed two bonds in less than eight years, the school district is considering proposing another one for $120 million.

"I think that is part of building a community," McCue said of bond issues, whose financing costs are added to property tax bills. "You are not just buying those three bedrooms and two baths. You want to live in a community, not just a house."

Another way school districts in Southwest County and across the state collect money from home buyers is through Community Facilities Districts, or CFDs.

CFDs allow school districts to levy special taxes on homeowners to pay for new schools, sometimes at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars to the home buyer, over the course of several decades. Home buyers often have the option to pay their balance at once, if they can afford it.

The Temecula school district's Board of Trustees unanimously approved a CFD at its April board meeting for hundreds of homes not yet built or occupied in French Valley in order to issue up to $12 million in bonds to pay for new schools.

"People don't mind it when it gives the quality of life they are looking for," Trustee Stewart Morris had said of the CFD before his vote. "Everything costs."

Developers are also part of the money-culling equation for school districts, which raise developer fees when appropriate. In April, the Murrieta school district's Board of Trustees unanimously agreed to increase its commercial development fee from 33 cents per square foot to 36 cents per square foot. That equates to the district receiving $36,000 for construction of a 100,000-square-foot warehouse.

An approach of some school districts that is becoming more common in building campuses is to share some costs with cities in so-called joint-use agreements, McCue said.

Murrieta officials have talked about that possibility as they work toward building a high school in the middle of the city.

"As budgets have become tighter and both the school districts and cities are trying to find creative ways to save money, they have begun to appreciate the value of working together on these issues," McCue said.

By the numbers

New schools are opening across Southwest County as growth in the region continues to explode. For the 2005-06 school year, seven new public schools are welcoming students:

TEMECULA VALLEY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

School name: Tony Tobin Elementary

Address: 45200 Morgan Hill Drive, Temecula

Cost: $20 million

Opening to how many students: 395

Colors: n/a

Mascot: Trail Blazers

Principal: Holly McClurg

Phone number: (951) 294-6355

School name: Susan LaVorgna Elementary

Address: 31777 Algarve Ave., Winchester

Cost: $19 million

Opening to how many students: 464

Colors: Dark blue, yellow and red

Mascot: Lions

Principal: Jona Hazlett

Phone number: (951) 294-6385

School name: Crowne Hill Elementary

Address: 33535 Old Kent Road, Temecula

Cost: $25 million

Opening to how many students: 505

Colors: Royal blue and yellow

Mascot: Royals

Principal: Karen Johnson

Phone number: (951) 294-6370

MURRIETA VALLEY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

School name: Antelope Hills Elementary

Address: 36105 Murrieta Oaks East, Murrieta

Cost: $15.5 million

Opening to how many students: 654

Colors: Green and gold

Mascot: Explorers

Principal: Karen Briski

Phone number: n/a

LAKE ELSINORE UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

School name: Lakeside High School

Address: 32593 Riverside Drive, Lake Elsinore

Cost: $73 million

Opening to how many students: About 1,200 freshmen and sophomores

Colors: Green and gold

Mascot: Lancers

Principal: Lorie Reitz

Phone number: (951) 609-0121

School name: Ronald Reagan Elementary School

Address: 35445 Porras Road, Wildomar

Cost: $17 million

Opening to how many students: 400

Colors: n/a

Mascot: Patriots

Principal: Craig Richter

Phone number: n/a

MENIFEE UNION SCHOOL DISTRICT

School name: Oak Meadows Elementary

Address: 28600 Poinsettia St., Murrieta

Cost: $12 million

Opening to how many students: 680

Colors: Cardinal red and tan

Mascot: Red-tailed hawk

Principal: Linda Chirico

Phone number: (951) 246-4210

Contact staff writer Jennifer Kabbany at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2625, or jkabbany@californian.com.

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