No Escape in a ‘No’ Vote

Ask people in Santa Clarita why they live where they do, and a lot of them will tell you that they moved to this north Los Angeles County valley to get away from Los Angeles and its problems.

So it’s dumbfounding that twice in a row now Santa Clarita has voted to take the same problem-plagued path.

Only if you’d lived on Mars for the past year would you not know that among the many crises Los Angeles faces is severely overcrowded schools. The Los Angeles Unified School District needs to build between 100 and 150 new schools over the next 10 years--a doomed goal given how difficult it’s proving to find available land, much less money. In the meantime, students already attend school on staggered, year-round schedules or sit on buses for longer than an hour a day. Playground space has been lost to row after row of portable classrooms.

So what does Santa Clarita do? Vote down school bonds.

For the second time since November, a relative handful of residents--90 on Tuesday, 124 last fall--have voted no on schools, keeping a $52 million bond issue from getting the two-thirds majority needed for passage.

They don’t say they’re voting against schools, of course. They, like anyone else not living on Mars, know that Santa Clarita is the fastest growing city in the county and that schools in the William S. Hart Union High School District already are bulging.

They just don’t trust the district to spend the money it has wisely. And to make their point--and save the $25 a year the bond issue would have cost them--they’re willing to see schools adopt year-round schedules and hold two sessions a day. They’re willing to wait another 10 to 12 years for new schools, never mind that enrollment is projected to double in the next five years.

But, hey, at least they don’t live in Los Angeles.