Phil Halperin, co-chair of the campaign for Proposition A, said the improvements are long overdue and he expects the measure to easily surpass the needed 55 percent of the vote. However, he said lower voter turnout could mean that it fails to reach the 70 percent vote won in 2003 by a $295 million school bond measure that funded projects at 30 schools.

Prop. A has been endorsed by city Democrats, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, the teacher’s union, and all the major city newspapers. “The only endorsement we don’t have is the Republicans,” Halperin said, and even then there is no organized opposition campaign. “This city can’t agree that the sun’s coming up tomorrow, but we agree on Prop. A.”

Roger Schulke, a businessman and Republican candidate for the San Francisco Board of Education, is one of the few opponents. “Bonds to the city are like drugs to an addict,” said Schulke, who is also opposed to all but one of the state bonds on the November ballot, calling them “pork measures”.

Schulke argues that San Francisco cannot be trusted with the bond funds, suggesting that they would be illegally funneled into the city’s general fund and spent on projects like studying “how HIV is spread in the beer halls of Zimbabwe.”

The Prop. A campaign has had to contend with the school district’s handling of $90 million in bond funds approved by voters in 1997. Last year, the city controller’s office discovered unfinished construction projects and misspending of funds on salaries, and a bond program oversight contractor pleaded guilty to criminal conduct.

But, David Goldin, Chief Facilities Officer for the San Francisco Unified School District, said if Prop. A does not pass, the school district will be in serious trouble with the federal government.

Many of the planned renovations are motivated by the settlement of a 1999 lawsuit that requires the school district to comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. The lawsuit identified 90 schools for accessibility upgrades by 2012.

Goldin said 28 percent of the bond funds would be used to bring schools into compliance with the act. The rest would be used to install new sprinkler systems and fire doors, replace aging roofs, freshen paint jobs, and pay for other routine repairs. Some schools would see renovations to gym floors or auditorium seating.

“We recognize you can’t go to the voters and say increase your taxes, pay for this stuff, and the only benefit you’re gonna get out of it is a fire sprinkler system and some handicap ramps,” Goldin said. “Plus, while we’re doing this work, that’s the time to do all these other things. You don’t want to move the kids out four times.”

The accessibility upgrades and other improvement projects will proceed simultaneously.

The laundry list of projects at the 64 sites outlined in the language of Prop. A looks a lot like the list of problems at 30 other schools addressed by the 2003 bond measure.

In a few weeks the construction trailers will be rolled away from Alvarado Elementary School in San Francisco’s Noe Valley, one of the schools where renovations were paid for by the 2003 bond funds. Projects at 18 schools, including Alvarado, were underway last summer. Another 12 schools will be starting in the next few months.

To make the bathrooms at Alvarado Elementary handicap accessible, the construction crew had to rip out the old tile and annihilate the plumbing. Maureen Shelton, senior construction manager for the district, said instead of doing another patch job in a school that’s surely seen many patch jobs in its 70-year history, the bathrooms were fully renovated. The walls in every bathroom now boast bright blue tile. Shelton expects the renovations to last 25 years.

School administrators said that the projects paid for by the bonds are needed, but may go unrecognized by many in the community.

About a third of the staircase inside Alvarado’s new front doors, for example, was cut away earlier this year to accommodate a wheelchair lift. Braille placards now mark every classroom. There’s also a new ramp that winds down around the two-tier playground, so that disabled children can now reach the lower level, where the black top also got a freshly painted baseball diamond, basketball and four-square courts.

“We usually don’t get ‘at-a-boys”, said Shelton. “Most of the general public doesn’t care about a new ramp to the front of the school.”

But first grade teacher Ann Chang does appreciate the new wheelchair accessible stainless steel sink in her classroom.

“We use it everyday,” Chang said, explaining that her students often get messy. “In first grade, we do a lot of projects with glue and stuff.”

If approved, Prop. A would mean that over the 25-year life of the bonds, an average of $22.26 per $100,000 of assessed value would be added to the annual tax bill of city property owners.

Goldin said San Francisco voters should expect a third record-breaking bond measure in the next few years to complete the modernization of district schools. He said ultimately the price tag for all the improvements will near a billion and a half dollars, and there will still be more to do.

The 2003 bond didn’t provide funds to replace the worn flooring on the second floor of Alvarado Elementary. The seam running all the way down the hallway is splitting. It dips and bubbles up in places. That job will likely stay on the deferred maintenance list for years.