CONSTRUCTING A BETTER BOND; LANCASTER SCHOOL DISTRICT TAKES POINTER FROM L.A. UNIFIED.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Daily News Staff Writer

Prompted in part by Los Angeles Unified School District's controversy over how it spends its school construction bond money, the Lancaster School District is forming a citizens committee to oversee spending of its $29 million bond.

While campaigning for the bond, school officials encountered skepticism among many in the community that funds would be spent appropriately, some members of the public saying they'd heard about the LAUSD problems and wondered what the Lancaster district would do to prevent a similar situation.

``Many people were concerned that bond funds would be used for things other than construction and school improvement. They wanted a kind of process to be sure,'' said Ned McNabb, assistant superintendent for business services.

``We put our heads together, and decided, like many other school districts, we would formulate a community-based oversight committee to review use of funds periodically to make sure that we were holding to what voters had approved.''

The committee, whose makeup has not been decided, will meet quarterly to review proposed spending and construction change orders.

``They will look at major facilities expenditures coming out of bond funds and review those expenditures and compare them to what we had in the voter-approved ballot,'' McNabb said. ``If they agree it is appropriate, they will make recommendations to the board.''

More than 100 people have applied to be members of the committee, and the district is still accepting applications. The district sent letters to all registered voters in the district asking them whether they would be interesting in serving on a bond oversight committee.

The board is scheduled at its next meeting to decide what the selection process will entail, and it will pick members in a month or two, McNabb said.

McNabb is recommending to the board that the committee consist of 10 to 15 people, all of whom must be registered voters in the district, and that four of the spots go to McNabb, a principal, a teacher, and a representative of the nonteaching staffers in the district.

Other criteria would include a willingness to attend the district's facilities planning committee monthly meetings. Other factors to be considered are past examples of community involvement and having broad-based representation by people with experience in fields such as finance, construction, real estate or being a parent, McNabb said.

The district also wants to look at having the committee members geographically distributed so that different areas of the community are represented, McNabb said.

In the first successful Lancaster School District bond election since the 1950s, residents voted 77 percent to 23 percent on March 2 for a bond measure that district officials say will finance about half their $62.75 million wish list for building new schools and modernizing or improving older ones.

Measure A's passage means higher property taxes of about $27 a year for a home with an assessed valuation of $100,000.

The $13 million Amargosa Creek Middle School at 27th Street West and Avenue J for children now bused to Park View Middle School downtown will be the first campus built under the measure.

``I know this school district. We are completely honest with the community about what we are doing. I think it's good for us to have an oversight committee because it advertises we are straight shooters,'' McNabb said.

As school districts across the state increasingly have turned to local bond measures to cover modernization and expansion costs, citizens committees have taken increasingly important roles, with varying results.

In Los Angeles, the Proposition BB Blue Ribbon Citizens Oversight Committee has rarely reached consensus in monitoring a $2.4 billion bond, with debate culminating in the use of funds for the Belmont Learning Center project.

In Ventura, school officials brought together a citizens committee to identify long-term plans and funding sources for Ventura public schools.

That committee presented a more than 250-page report identifying project ideas at each school site and making a series of recommendations.