Consultant to study growth in district

This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press December 12, 2000

By JANNISE JOHNSON
Valley Press Staff Writer

LANCASTER - The Westside Union School District has hired a consultant to study student growth to determine if it needs to raise developer fees to help it pay for the construction of new schools.

Brenda Curtis, vice president of School Planning Services, an Orange County-based educational consulting firm, will study the growth patterns and make a recommendation to the district.

According to Lori Ordway-Peck, Westside superintendent of Business Services, Curtis will be paid $16,100 to determine if current developers fees should be raised and to conduct a demographics study for the district.

Developer fees are like taxes that home builders pay on each home the construct within the district's boundaries. The fee is based on the square footage of each home.

The district will have a workshop to discuss this and other topics at 6:30 p.m. today in the Joe Walker Middle School library, 5632 West Ave. L-8.

Ordway-Peck said most of the district's schools are housing student populations greater than the facilities were built to hold.

While Neenach and Leona Valley elementary schools are not overcrowded, she said, the majority of district schools are.

"It's pretty overcrowded particularly at the middle school level," Ordway-Peck said.

Hillview Middle School houses 1,100 students, 300 students more than the 800 it was for, she said. Joe Walker educates 1,000 students, 240 more than the 760 it was built to hold.

If administrators were to raise the fees, Westside would be the third district to take such action this year.

The Palmdale School District raised its developers fees in February, and the Antelope Valley Union High School District voted Nov. 15 to raise developer fees.

Westside now levies a $1.93per-square-foot fee on any new homes built within the school district's borders. This is a Level 1 or statutory fee.

Of that $1.93 fee, Westside kept 74% of that money while the high school district took the remaining 26%.

Since the high school district approved its Level 2 developer fee of $1.38 in November, the Westside district now keeps all the money from their $1.93 developer fee.

Curtis could not specify when she will be able to complete the study. She said she must examine the average size of new homes built as well as how many homes are scheduled to be built in the area in the near future.

She also will look at the housing built within the last five years and determine how many district students resulted from that construction.

"You're really relying on historical information to determine what may happen in the future," Curtis said.

The number of students predicted to come into the area will determine how much the fee should be raised, she said.

The passage of Proposition 1A in 1998, which raised money for school districts to build new schools, also included a provision that allows school districts to reexamine developer fees every two years to determine whether to raise or lower them, Curtis said.