By KRIS REILLY, Editor

LUCERNE VALLEY • With the help of a group of community members calling itself Citizens to Save Our Schools, it appears certain that Lucerne Valley Unified School District is about to push for a general obligation bond on the June ballot.

The Save Our Schools committee, which includes several community members along with LVUSD Superintendent Mike Noga and LVUSD board member Julia Bell, held its third meeting last week at Lucerne Valley Community Church.

Though the specifics have not been hammered out, the group has decided that a general obligation bond will be the only way to pull the district out of its financial crisis.

The bond would increase local property taxes by a yet-to-be-determined amount for a yet-to-be-determined number of years.

Those specifics will be dictated by the amount of money the district decides to ask for. The bond measure must be submitted to the registrar of voters no later than March 11.

The district, with the help of the committee, must decide whether to push for a bond that will simply pay off its debt or to ask for more money to pay for needed improvements and to offset the state budget shortfall.

The district’s debt comes from the certificate of participation loan taken out by the board in 2007. LVUSD owes a group of private investors more than $500,000 next year and will owe more than $400,000 in each subsequent year until 2039.

The collateral on the loan is Lucerne Valley High School.

If the district defaults on its debt, it’s likely that the state or another district would take over LVUSD. If that happens, the property which secures the loan – the high school – may be handed over to the lenders.

Noga said that he had looked into loan modification, but that prospect is complicated by the fact that a certificate of participation involves a number of private investors rather than a single entity.

Noga also said that he planned to meet with the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools in an effort to predict what might happen if the district defaults on its debt. That meeting was tentatively planned for Feb. 11.

The committee also discussed the possibility of town hall meetings to discuss the budget issues and the bond, but dates for those meetings had not been set.