DEVELOPERS OK DEAL ON SCHOOL FEES; 2 PROJECTS TO PAY INTO FUND.

Byline: Mary Schubert / Daily News Staff Writer

Developers planning to build nearly 2,000 homes in the Canyon Country and Castaic areas have finalized agreements with the William S. Hart Union High School District on fees to fund school construction.

On Wednesday, the Hart school board is expected to approve a deal with Pardee Construction Co., which plans to build 1,850 homes near the Antelope Valley Freeway and Via Princessa, a project it calls Fair Oaks Ranch.

Last week, the board approved a pact with the Larwin Co., Encino developers who intend to build 114 homes on land near Hillcrest Parkway and The Old Road.

The Hart school board approved an agreement in which Larwin would pay the district $1,500 for each apartment unit, condominium or townhome it builds and $4,000 for each single-family home, said Superintendent Robert Lee.

The Fair Oaks Ranch proposal includes 1,600 houses and 250 apartments, condos or townhomes. Lee has recommended the board approve the agreement the district negotiated - in which Pardee would pay $5,600 in fees for every house it builds and $2,100 for each multifamily unit in the project.

Developer fees paid to school districts help offset the costs to build new schools and maintain existing ones for the flood of new pupils brought by construction of residential developments.

If the Hart district later receives some school construction money from the state government, the district will refund part of that sum to the developers, Lee said.

The Hart district has 13,000 students at its four junior highs and four high schools and has been working in earnest to get another junior high school and high school built.

Although plans call for Pardee's residential tract to include a new elementary school - an agreement that is still being negotiated between the developer and the Sulphur Springs School District - none of the land in the project's 870 acres will be set aside to build a high school or junior high, said Pardee project manager John Osgood.

Lee said that while the hilly acreage may be appropriate for building homes, it wasn't suitable for construction of a high school or junior high - which generally require flat, open land.

Hart officials have often said that the eastern Santa Clarita Valley desperately needs another high school to ease crowding at Canyon High.

``To get a 45-acre, usable area for a high school would be difficult over there,'' Lee said. ``To make that a high school site, you would have to go to the top of the mountain and just keep grading.''

As for building another junior high on some of Pardee's acreage, the proposed tract will be close to La Mesa Junior High, and Lee said it wouldn't make sense to build a second school for seventh- and eighth-graders so near to La Mesa.

In recent years, school districts have had a hard time getting money from the state government to pay for construction of new schools, meaning districts increasingly require developers to pay upfront for the impact their homes will have on the local public school system.

Osgood said crews have already started grading the land for the Fair Oaks Ranch tracts, and construction on the homes is slated to begin in January.