On Bonds and Equity
At Wednesday’s meeting, the Board discussed a survey to assess community sentiment around a new bond measure. My comments are here, beginning at 3:40:34.
In summary, California’s prioritization of DEI—equity in particular—brought us this system wherein high-achieving districts with higher-income residents receive far less funding than other districts, and our children are penalized with uninhabitable buildings and rejection from UC schools. I want this community to think critically about continuing to support a political philosophy that tangibly harms kids in our community.
The transcript of my comments, with links added for reference, follows:
“I’ve been clear about my position on school facilities on my website (see here). I've had discussions with our state legislature, including our representative Al Muratsuchi. I've expressed that it is not fair for districts like ours to receive a fraction of the funding that other districts in low-income areas receive in our State.
The way that California funds school districts is an example of equity in practice. There's something called the LCFF equity multiplier that provides more money to “socioeconomically disadvantaged” students. On top of that, supplemental grants are provided by the state to districts with high numbers of English learners, free or reduced lunch, and foster youth. Litigation has revealed that the extra dollars allocated to these districts haven't been used to help those impacted communities.
Essentially, your tax dollars are being taken away from your own children and given to other districts. Meanwhile, your kids are attending school in PV in buildings that are rat-infested and were built in the 1950s and 1960s. This is what equity policy and dysfunctional government looks like in practice, and this is coming down from the State.
Equity is also why there's been a massive drop in UC admissions from our district, due to the UC system’s use of zip codes in its admission decisions. So, my first suggestion is that if you're going to continue to support DEI initiatives in the state, I hope that you will be first in line to make a massive donation to our district so that we can fix our buildings. If you're unwilling to do that then I would ask you to rethink your position and to push back on our State model of starving districts like ours of resources because we are “high achieving” and have higher income residents.
I've expressed to our legislature that it is unsafe for our students to attend school in crumbling buildings, and at a minimum the state needs to fund repairs to make our facilities safe. We likely don't even meet a basic habitability standard in many of our buildings right now. Fifty percent of our state revenues go to education. Where is that going? We have allegedly the fifth largest economy in the world in this State but we cannot give our children safe buildings, when we spent $128 billion toward public education in California last year. It doesn't make sense.
When I spoke to Assemblymember Muratsuchi, he told me that we have to pass a bond. It's the only way to fix our buildings. He told me that we cannot retain more of the tax revenue we generate that is passed on to other districts because “it's the State's money.” He told me we need a better consultant. His pending bill doesn't help us because it still requires us to pass a bond, which Mr. Isom explained, and a bond requires a vote of the community.
There is, apparently, no money available to fix our infrastructure unless we pass a local bond. I cannot change the mentality of our legislature and I cannot alone fix this problem. I've tried. I've been trying. There are legal strategies to pursue, there are political strategies to pursue, but really we're up against a behemoth and a political philosophy that is just not compatible with reality.
I personally don't know if we can move the needle on a bond when there was only 39% yes and 62% no on Measure PV in 2020. I think that's a massive gap to bridge and I'm concerned about going back to the voters like Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach that have been layering debt on top of debt. So, if we're going to proceed—and I know we're not approving a bond we're just going out to explore feasibility—but I ask that we get every person involved in the opposition to Measure PV on board ask them what they would need to get behind this bond, if anything. Look at what Walnut Valley did in 2016 after they had a failed bond measure—they brought in a local taxpayer advocate group and a statewide group and met objective criteria to garner support. The state group is called the California Taxpayers Action Network and they provided 6 criteria that the school bond complied with in order to get the support the public support from CalTAN.
I'm just going to read off those six criteria and then I'll wrap my comments. This is the language that must be in the bond in order for CalTAN to support it and I suggest that at a minimum we include this if we proceed:
1. Contracts are awarded only via sealed competitive bidding by pre qualified bidders
2. Specific prioritized project list with estimated cost for each project and a commitment to build the projects in the prioritized order promised.
3. Commit 3% of general fund budget for facilities maintenance for the life of the bond.
4. Not more than 20% of bond dollars can be spent on items with useful life of less than the bond term.
5. Not more than 33% of bond dollars can be used for soft costs, which means the cost of the bond issuance architectural and engineering fees management division of state architect fees and costs inspection and/or consultants. The district will pay from costs in excess of 33% from sources other than bonded debt.
6. Must state anticipated total cost of borrowing for bond.”
As always, this is just one lady’s opinion. I don’t speak for the Board and no one else speaks for me.
