LOCAL SCHOOL PLANS HALTED WESTPARK CAMPUS OK'D, BUT OTHER AREA BONDS REJECTED.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

ROSAMOND - Rosamond voters approved a school bond measure after four failed attempts in the 1980s and 1990s, but Acton and Agua Dulce rejected school bonds for their communities.

Southern Kern Unified School District's Measure H will pay off about half of $10.3 million in high-interest debt incurred to build and improve schools to meet demands of a booming enrollment in the early 1990s, and the money will also help build a new school, Westpark Elementary.

``It gets us out from under a huge burden we've been under, which allows us to remain competitive in the teacher market, and it allows us to provide better schools for our children and smaller classes,'' Southern Kern Trustee Olaf Landsgaard said Wednesday.

In Acton-Agua Dulce Unified School District, voters rejected Measure Q for $21.5 million that would have paid for a permanent campus for Vasquez High School and refinanced some debt.

Of 11 school bond elections Tuesday in Los Angeles County, only measures in the Acton-Agua Dulce Unified and Santa Monica-Malibu districts failed to pass, officials said.

``We're not going to give up on giving our kids a real high school. We'll have to review as a board what our options are,'' Acton-Agua Dulce Trustee Steve Harbeson said.

Harbeson said voters may have been swayed by false rumors that Vasquez High students would be bused to Palmdale High School during construction of the new school or that interest would bump the total cost of the bond issue to $100 million.

``I think maybe it may have just scared off the voters,'' Harbeson said.

One option, Acton-Agua Dulce Superintendent Don Banderas said Wednesday, is to put another bond measure before voters, possibly as early as next November's school board election.

Each bond measure required a 55 percent majority to pass. Each would have raised property taxes by $60 annually per $100,000 of assessed value, the maximum allowed under a state law that lowered the voter majority required for school bonds from two-thirds to 55 percent.

Southern Kern's bond measures in the 1980s and 1990s always got more than 55 percent, but not the two-thirds then necessary.

Southern Kern's Measure H authorized issuing up to $12 million in bonds. But assessed property valuation currently is enough for only about $7 million, officials said.

The other $5 million in bonds could be issued later, after new construction or increases in property value boost the district's assessed valuation.

Officials hope to start construction early next year on Westpark Elementary School, for which designs already have been drawn up. It would open in fall 2004.

With the passage of the bond measure and the start of Westpark construction, Southern Kern officials expect the district will qualify for a state grant to expand Rosamond High School's cafeteria and to install Internet lines and upgrade computers at schools.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(color) Vasquez High students will continue to attend classes in ``temporary'' buildings on a make-do campus. Acton-Agua Dulce voters on Tuesday turned down Measure Q that would finance a permanent high school.

(2) Vasquez High School students stand outside the ``temporary'' portable buildings that the Acton-Agua Dulce board hoped to replace with what one member called ``a real high school.'' But voters rejected a bond issue. Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer