School Board Weighs 3rd Tax Vote : Beverly Hills: A decision is expected next week on whether to put a hotly disputed parcel tax proposal on the March ballot. Board members appear to favor it.

Beverly Hills school board members indicated Tuesday night that they were leaning toward putting a parcel tax before the voters for a third time.

During a public hearing that drew about 75 people and lasted more than three hours, pro- and anti-tax forces retraced their lines. They echoed many of the arguments made during the two previous failed attempts to pass the tax to benefit the Beverly Hills schools. They tried to out-applaud each other and at times verbally sparred outside the meeting room.

Parents, teachers and students urged the school board to launch a third try, while opponents declared the effort would be a waste of time.

The board plans to make a decision next week. It must act by Nov. 2 to get the measure on the March, 1991, ballot.

Parcel taxes require the approval of two-thirds of the voters to take effect. The first parcel tax attempt by the Beverly Hills Unified School District, in 1987, called for a flat fee of $270 assessed on each parcel of land in the city. It was approved by 59% of the voters.

The second proposal, on the June ballot, fell just four votes shy of passage. Parcels would have been assessed between $250 and $750 a year, depending on their size and use. The tax, levied over the next five years, would garner about $4.5 million annually for the schools.

Its proponents raised $126,000 for their campaign and enjoyed the backing of the City Council, several television stars, and the teachers union. They were up against statistics--statewide parcel tax elections only have a 36% success rate--and the city’s demographics--large numbers of voters who don’t have children in the schools, many parents who are recent immigrants and not yet eligible to vote, and many teachers who cannot afford to live in Beverly Hills and therefore cannot vote for the tax.

Several parents at the hearing who pledged their support for a third try nevertheless urged the school board to pare down the tax amount.

With the impending recession, higher tax rates and the Persian Gulf conflict, “you have a less attractive atmosphere to pass the same amount,” said Bob Magid, whose children graduated from Beverly Hills schools. Even if a tax passed, the board must continue to cut costs, he added.

“Sometimes you have to take half a loaf rather than a full loaf,” he said. An assessment in between the $270 and $750 might sell, he said afterward.

Board members said afterward that they were undecided about an amount, although one member, Dana Tomarken, said: “If you’re going to go for it, you have got to go for your need.”

Board President Frank Fenton said: “We could probably pass a tax of ($58) like Santa Monica, but how much good is that going to do?” Voters in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District have twice approved a $58-per-parcel tax.

With the failure of the June tax, Beverly Hills laid off 41 teachers and dozens of other employees and axed German, astronomy and other classes. If the current staffing and programs are maintained for the next five years, the district will still face a deficit of $2.2 million over this period, the district says. If the cuts made this year are restored, the deficit over five years would total $21.9 million.

The tax’s failure also meant that teachers lost a 3% pay raise for the 1990-91 school year, negotiated during their strike last fall but made contingent on passage of the parcel tax.

Classes that previously had about 25 students have more than 30 this year, said Betty Nichols, the teachers union representative at the high school. One classroom started the year with six students sitting at tables or at the teacher’s desk because there were not enough student desks, she said.

Another teacher told the board that one of her students broke two of his ribs, yet he did not have access to the one nurse who divides her time among the district’s five schools.

But tax opponent Kurt Haber said the schools have “ideal teaching conditions” compared to Los Angeles schools and argued that Beverly Hills teachers should work harder.

Sherman Kulick, who led the fight against the two prior taxes, said the district had not “cut to the bone” and should be emphasizing the three Rs. Other school districts spend less money per pupil, yet their students score as well or better than Beverly Hills students on state tests, he said in the June campaign.

“The last thing you’re looking at is throwing money at a problem to cover up the problem,” he said Tuesday.

But Fenton said: “We either have to go the way the Los Angeles school district did over the last 10 years, which is slow decline, or we have to pony up the money in this district to make up the difference.”

Board member Betty Wilson said it was selfish for people whose children have graduated from the district to now protest a schools tax.

Adding to the pressure for a third try is that a challenge to the June election results has been stymied. Nine voters filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court in early August, charging that 52 yes votes were improperly excluded from the tally by an elections board that examined disputed and questionable ballots.

But a judge this month threw out the suit, after county elections officials argued that the complaint was filed too late. The plaintiffs are appealing.