Colleges Pin Hopes for Upgrading on Bond Issue

On one community college campus in the San Fernando Valley, desks slide across the floor of a 50-year-old “temporary” building tilted with age.

On another campus, music students study under trees in a nearby park, not for inspiration but because no classrooms are available.

These laments by community college presidents could be quieted if a proposed $1.2-billion bond measure is approved by voters in April.

Mission, Valley and Pierce colleges could get about one-third of the Los Angeles Community College District’s most ambitious bond proposal. Officials said they would use the money to update, upgrade and expand their schools. The measure would bring the three San Fernando Valley schools and six others in the district into the national campus construction boom that has done little to modernize older colleges.

Proposition 39, approved by California voters in November, makes passing a school bond easier by lowering the majority needed for passage from two-thirds to 55%. But the district will have to convince taxpayers that the $25 per $100,000 of property valuation tax increase will be used for buildings and not to raise instructors’ salaries, as some critics have charged.

“This is another Band-Aid to pay for past mistakes in a dysfunctional district,” said Gordon Murley, president of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization.

Voters Will Be Sending Students a Message

The outcome of the bond election will tell the next generation of students whether Los Angeles values the education that community colleges currently deliver “with poor facilities and low budgets,” said Tyree Weider, president of Valley College in Valley Glen.

“We tell them how important education is, and then they see the places we give them to get that education,” she said.

At Mission College in Sylmar, a surge in enrollment has filled classrooms beyond capacity during its first nine years, President Adriana Barrera said.

Pierce College in Woodland Hills installed air-conditioning in some 50-year-old buildings two months ago but lacks other technology necessary for a modern campus, said President Darroch “Rocky” Young.

Of the district’s nine campuses, Valley College has the most run-down, out-of-date facilities, according to a recent report commissioned by the community college district. Consultants scored the campuses on a scale from 1 to 100, with 1 being perfect and 100 indicating a school blighted beyond repair. Valley College’s Truman-era buildings earned a 54.2, the lowest of the nine.

The sliding desks are in Valley College bungalows that were supposed to be used for only two or three years when they were erected more than four decades ago. On another part of campus, the floor cracks underfoot in an antiquated science building.

District Vice Chancellor Mary Lee, who served as president of Valley College from 1981-94, joked that she found a way to keep the portable buildings level as they sank with age.

“We trained the termites to eat the bungalows down evenly,” she said.

Valley’s $165-million portion of the bond proposal includes a new science building, a media arts center complete with a broadcast studio, a new library-learning center and a new health sciences building, among other projects.

At Mission College, enrollment has grown from 6,000 to 7,100 since it opened in 1991.

District officials knew the school would soon outgrow its shell when it was built, but hopes for an immediate expansion were dashed when a 1991 bond proposal failed by 3% to get the two-thirds majority vote needed at the time to raise taxes.

Although Mission’s facilities rated a 4.5 in the consultant’s study--by far the best in the district--there is not enough room for art and music classes because of overcrowding. Instead, those courses are taught in rented space at Veterans Park down the street.

“We can’t fully reach our 7,100-member student body without a full complement of facilities to go along with it,” Barrera said. “For example, we need to have more science labs if we want to help raise our science students’ transfer rate into university programs.”

Mission’s $111-million proposal includes a classroom building, a multipurpose gym with racquetball courts and a simulated driving range, a parking garage that would more than triple the number of spaces available and several other expansions.

While Mission and Valley have spent more than a year preparing their proposals with input from various on- and off-campus groups, only Pierce has mounted a successful campaign to get public support for its projects.

The $166-million Pierce plan consists of a combination of privately funded projects, such as biotechnology laboratories and housing for senior citizens, and publicly funded additions, such as a new stadium and an equestrian center.

Some Residents Voice Objections to Plans

Although Pierce has gained resounding support for its plan, the first public critics to surface are from its own backyard--Gordon Murley’s homeowners group in Woodland Hills. He spoke against the bond during a meeting last week of the community college board of trustees, arguing that language in the proposal does not restrict spending solely to capital improvements.

“There’s a lot of stuff in there that will require maintenance and operation,” Murley said. “We know dang well they’re disingenuous. There are going to be salary raises and operation costs pulled from this bond. The public will be lucky to get 35 cents on the dollar out of this.”

The homeowners association has fought to be included in fiscal decisions made by the city, the Los Angeles Unified School District and the college trustees. The group blocked a 1996 tax increase by the college district that would have added lighting and landscaping to the Pierce campus.

And in an ambivalent letter to the board of trustees, the Canoga Park-Winnetka Neighborhood Planning Advisory Council noted that while the Pierce proposal addresses major development concerns, it also recommends removing “historic” farm buildings--something the council opposes.

Vice Chancellor Lee countered that the public will have a number of chances to provide input before construction begins.

“By law, we will have oversight of the money,” Lee said. “No one in their right mind can refuse this bond.”

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Proposals for Colleges

The Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees approved a $1.2-billion bond for construction and renovation projects for the April ballot. If passed, the $165 million for Valley College and the $111 million for Mission College will go toward the following proposed projects: