Proposed Tax Aims to Raise School Funds : Education: Property owners could see taxes increased an extra $87 for every $100,000 assessed valuation to pay for building new schools and modernizing existing ones.

San Diego city residents will be asked in June to raise their property taxes to pay for $215 million in needed construction and renovation of city schools.

School board trustees said Tuesday they will give final approval next week to a ballot measure asking residents to authorize construction bonds for projects that include several new schools in the Mid-City, Golden Hill and Barrio Logan areas totaling more than $100 million.

But the projects, all of which must be listed by name on the ballot, also will provide for extensive remodeling of middle schools citywide to equip them for 21st Century educational technology.

In that way, residents in the Point Loma and North City areas, who are more likely to vote than predominantly minority residents in areas south of Interstate 8 that are burgeoning with school children, will be given more of a stake in the issue, school district administrators believe.

Property owners would be taxed as much as an extra $87 a year for every $100,000 assessed valuation.

The construction would cover a 10-year period through 2003, but the most expensive projects would be planned immediately after voter approval, giving a boost to the region’s depressed building trades industry.

Passage of the measure will require only a simple majority vote because it involves reinstating taxing authority originally authorized by voters in 1974. Under state legislation passed in 1987, any additional tax would therefore not be a new tax otherwise requiring a two-thirds vote.

A similar bond measure, Proposition Y, was passed with a 61% simple majority vote in June, 1988, which has raised almost $150 million during the past four years for construction of eight new schools--including Scripps Ranch High School and Challenger Junior High School in North City--as well as reconstruction of eight elementary schools and 10 secondary school science labs.

However, the district’s continuing enrollment growth--now at 124,000 and expected to increase to 150,000 by 2010--has resulted in overcrowded schools in several urban areas not anticipated when the 1988 construction list was drawn up.

Many schools are now on year-round schedules and the district has opened several overflow schools, to which students in certain grades are bused from overcrowded schools.

But administrators concede that even simple majority approval will be difficult because of the recession, an anti-tax mood among voters and general doubts about the efficacy of public education.

The district, however will benefit somewhat from a lack of competing state bond measures or other spending proposals on the June general primary ballot that could galvanize opposition to anti-spending forces, an administrator said.

Under the new proposal, four new schools would be built in areas projected to have the greatest enrollment growths for this decade: an elementary school and a middle school in the Mid-City area around Hoover and Crawford high schools; an elementary school in Golden Hill; and an elementary school near overcrowded Balboa Elementary in Barrio Logan.

The single most expensive project would the estimated $50-million Mid-City middle school to relieve overcrowding at Wilson and Mann middle schools. The Mid-City elementary would cost about $23.5 million, the Golden Hil school $20.45 million and the Barrio Logan area school $14.35 million. Total new-schools costs of almost $108 million, including land acquisition, would be about half the amount raised by a successful bond measure.

Permanent additions would be made to Wangenheim and Challenger junior highs in Mira Mesa, to De Portola Middle School in Tierrasanta, to Morse High School and Bell Junior High in Paradise Hills and to San Diego High School in downtown. The total cost would be $28.4 million and eliminate dependence on cramped portable classrooms that are now an unwelcome fixture on those campuses.

The district would remodel existing facilities at Wilson Middle School and Hamilton Elementary in Mid-City, San Diego High, Morse High, and Balboa Elementary, many of which are 25 or more years old and straining from enrollments far greater than planned for originally.

Garfield Alternative School in Normal Heights will be changed into an elementary school and Garfield’s programs will be located to another site to be selected later. Total cost would run $22.35 million for all the district’s remodeling.

In addition, every other district middle school, from Point Loma to San Carlos and from La Jolla to Southeast San Diego, would be modernized to have an educational technology center and be able to accommodate the latest technology as it becomes available. That would cost $46.2 million.

The taxing authority originally authorized for the school district by voters in 1974 was computed at a potential maximum $95 per $100,000 assessed valuation following passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, which put limits on property tax collections.

Until the passage of Proposition Y in 1988, the district was collecting only $25 per $100,000 assessed valuation. Under the 1988 measure, that level will reach a maximum of $77 in 1994 and then drop gradually. This year it is at $38 and will rise to $55 next year as approved construction from 1988 continues.

If the June measure is successful, the district will immediately raise its collections to the maximum $95 per $100,000 assessed valuation allowed.