Carol Burris released the following statement for voters in California:
The Network for Public Education and the Network for Public Education Action both support California Proposition 55.
Proposition 55 prevents billions in budget cuts without raising taxes by ensuring the wealthiest Californians continue to pay their share. 55 requires strict accountability and transparency to ensure funds get to the classroom. We can’t afford to go back to the days of devastating cuts and teacher layoffs.
Proposition 55 maintains the current income tax rate on couples earning over $500,000 a year, only affecting the wealthiest Californians and it has strict transparency and accountability requirements to make sure that education funds get to the classroom.
Under Prop 55, the money must go to local schools and the Legislature can’t touch it. Strict accountability requirements ensure funds designated for education go to classrooms, not to administrative costs. Proposition 55 also gives control to school boards to determine student needs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you from California! We are just recovering, and losing this would be a major setback for our schools.
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There is no transparency for Prop 55.
And Governor Brown, as promised, is taking money from some districts and giving it to others.
The most appalling is Centinela Valley Unified where the FBI is still investigating the school board and district for mis-use of public funds and buying their superintendent a $900,000 home.
Centinela Valley is GETTING THE MOST PER PUPIL FUNDING IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY.
Thanks Gov. Brown.
http://www.dailybreeze.com/social-affairs/20160318/centinela-valley-school-district-to-sue-superintendent-who-made-750000-in-2013
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Good. Things looking better for HRC. Thank God
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I understand the frustration of Joan and others with California’s new Local Control Funding Formula that funds the districts with higher populations of 3 groups: English Language Learners, children living in poverty, and foster youth, more generously than districts that don’t. All California schools have been terribly underfunded since the passage of the anti-tax measure Prop 13 almost 40 years ago.
Some voters are withholding support of Prop 55 until other systemic problems are solved. I don’t agree that Prop 55 causes those problems. Legislation is incremental. Every law does not address every thing.
An unintended (maybe) consequence of the passage of Prop 13 has been divisive, pitting struggling middle class schools against schools with the above identified subgroups. It seems the politicians don’t understand that we need middle class voters to support public education. But that’s a topic for another day, in my opinion.
Prop 55 is supported by Californians for Justice, the entire coalition of social justice organizations that forms California Calls, in addition to both teachers unions, and it is NOT supported by the California Charter Schools Association (they are not taking a stand).
The LAUSD superintendent has asked department heads to prepare budgets for 30% cuts, presumably in case Prop 55 fails. Many LA schools would absolutely not survive.
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I meant to say “An unintended (maybe) consequence of the LCFF…”
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This Act is legally titled The California Children’s Education and Health Care Protection Act…and almost half the funding will go to Medical costs for health care. It specifies in Section 2(a) that “during the recent recession, California cut more than $56 B from education, health care and other…services” Now California operates at a surplus with a viable ‘rainy day’ fund which could be used for this funding. This tax also was “temporary for four years” and now it us to be extended to at least another 12 years. Indeed, there could well be another economic bubble, as the economists expect, causing a recession in the next 12 years.
Under Section 3, Purpose and Intent, sub-paragraph H3, it clearly specifies
“All moneys in the Education Protection Account are hereby continuously appropriated for the support of school districts, county offices of education, CHARTER SCHOOLS, and community college districts….etc.”
Clearly this tax money will support California’s CHARTER SCHOOLS as well as the real public schools.
Therefore, I urge a NO vote for the following reasons:
It is poor public policy to use this kind of temporary funding for both health care and education purposes. The problem of a severe recession in 2008 brought on the need for this TEMPORARY Act with Prop 30, but the State is in a more stable budgeting and no longer should this type of taxation directed only toward one group, be made. Broad based taxation must be used…and Prop 13 MUST be ameliorated so that, at very least, commercial properties should be taxed, and older home owners can be grand fathered and their private homes protected by the Jarvis Act, but changes to this act which killed PUBLIC SCHOOL funding in California, must be changed.
Despite this call by NPE above, which stipulates the tax is on those “couples” EARNING $500,000 and up, it actually starts on earnings of $250,000. Those individuals who EARN $250,000, pay IRS income tax of 38% and California State tax of about 15% plus Social Security FICA of 15%, Their net income is then about $125,000.
I contend that those taxed with a TEMPORARY tax should start at $1 Million and be a tax of 5%, not the stipulated 4%, and it should be on all income, both earned and invested. This group now only pays a 15% tax on invested income. This would actually catch those of the really highest incomes. California has the highest earners and investment income people in the nation, the most millionaires and billionaires, and this would bring in enough funding to cover all health care and education .
As a pro public school advocate, I do not wish for any taxpayer to be forced to pay for CHARTER SCHOOLS. Prop 55 guarantees funding for CHARTER SCHOOLS as well as true public schools.
All told, this kind of taxation is terrible public policy. Public schools should be taxed at the broadest base…perhaps 1/4 cent increase in sales tax, but certainly California needs total reform on how it raises money to fund public education. No longer should the State depend on a pittance from the State lottery, a pittance from Indian Gambling Casinos, and now another 12 year “temporary” tax that will then probably be written into permanent law, which are all open to recessionary downgrades in funding.
I rarely disagree with my friends and colleagues here, but this is a very poor way to fund our schools, and as we in California know, audits do not mean clean fiduciary behavior. In LA, we have two charter operators (Gulen’s Magnolia Charters, and BoE member Rodriguez’s PUC charter schools) right now under investigation due to financial audits (plus both El Camino Charter HS and Granada Charter HS under view for fiduciary finagling of public funds), and the BoE has yet to finalize their position on these, and other egregious charters mismanagement.
I recommend voting NO on Prop 55 in California.
May academic specialty, as most readers know, is public policy.
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….another typo as steam comes out of my ears over this election…as regulars here know, and as FLERP teases me about, I am a public policy educator which shapes my comments above….Happy Thanksgiving.
Ellen
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As a working high school English teacher in LAUSD, I say that we must pass Prop 55. Yes, the intent of Prop 30 in 2012 was to be a temporary tax to fill the gaping hole in education funding caused by the Great Recession. However, in the time since then, the legislature has failed to act to reform the tax structure. Extending some of the revenues to some health care providers is actually a stroke of genius by the writers of Prop 55, thereby muting potential business/chamber of commerce opposition to continuing the Prop 30 tax.
Yes, the property tax legacy of Prop 13 needs to be fixed. An oil severance tax would be nice. The LCFF needs to be fine-tuned (too many meetings for too little money while class sizes are still outrageous). But to vote no on Prop 55 means to once again see schools teeter on the economic abyss and then fall in screaming.
The LA Times editorialized against Prop 55 along the same lines of “this is no way to make a tax policy,” apparently forgetting that the children and schools don’t have time to wait for that “better” tax policy to come along. I assume the readers of this blog see that clearly. YES on Prop 55.
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Although I agree with you Brad with the need to find funding for public schools rapidly, I think the prime need of California voters is to FIX the Legislature and our system.
Voting on 17 highly technical and biased ballot measures is NO WAY to run government. this measure alone filled 6 pages of small print that only lawyers could understand. Yet California voters are bombarded with 17 legal documents to decipher and vote on. Impossible task for anyone, particularly uninformed voters, and those who and not English speakers. Thus, we continue to get horrible laws like Prop 13 voted in by masses of people who have NO idea what any of this means.
It is the dark (Citizens United) money that rules all of this.
We do not need to continue to foster and support terrible public policy that leads to such flawed laws as The Parent Empowerment Act of 2010 and now this and so many others like Jarvis and Prop 13. It must stop somewhere.
This could have been a viable and welcome ballot measure if it had been developed more carefully. But public education is a case unto itself and conflating health care and Charter Schools (in the small print) with funding public schools, is scamming the voters. It is the history of these measures sold to us as temporary that they become permanent. It is why gambling percentages are sold as school funding. None of this is recession proof but property tax and broad based sales tax is.
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