MURRIETA -- A $120 million bond measure to fund school construction and improvements will be put before voters this June, Murrieta Valley Unified School District trustees decided Monday.

In a 5-0 vote and without comment, the board at an afternoon meeting elected to put the measure before voters, culminating more than a year of talks and planning on the issue.

The board's vote comes after a lengthy meeting last week in which the trustees endorsed the measure's wording for the June 6 ballot.

What lies ahead is the campaign to convince voters to support the measure, trustees said after the meeting. They believe they already have a groundswell of support, they said.

"It's not a huge fight," Trustee Kris Thomasian said. "This bond has been researched and the community has been surveyed. We've been able to put together (a bond) the community supports."

The results of 400 telephone surveys in February found that 67 percent of those questioned indicated support for a bond. The district needs 55 percent of the vote to pass the measure.

"I really look forward to the process ahead of us," board President Margi Wray said. "We are geared to communicate with the public in as many ways as possible the needs of the district, and the reasons behind those needs."

The district plans to open four campuses in the next three years: another mainstream high school, one middle school and two elementary schools.

The third high school, which has yet to be named, is expected to cost $144 million. The district now has about $79 million to build that campus, officials said.

McElhinney Middle School is expected to cost $52.5 million, and the district is short about $8.6 million to build that French Valley campus, expected to open in 2008.

District officials also said they are short a total of $12 million to build two more elementary schools, Mails Elementary in French Valley, expected to open in 2007, and Sykes Elementary in western Murrieta, expected to open in 2008.

The bond measure is meant to cover those shortfalls, as well as to make repairs and renovations to the districts' campuses and technological upgrades at the schools.

Murrieta residents have approved three school bond measures since 1989, and homeowners are scheduled to pay off the current bonds by 2029. The June measure calls for an extension of the tax on homeowners for six years at the current rate of $102.82 per $100,000 of assessed value.

However, since district officials cannot predict whether a major fire or catastrophic earthquake could affect the tax rate, they said they could not explicitly write in the bond measure that it would not increase the rate.

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