Measure EE went down to defeat in Los Angeles yesterday. It was an effort to raise taxes mostly on commercial real estate to raise $500 million a year for the schools—to reduce class sizes, hire librarians, nurses, social workers, and psychologists and to expand classes in art and music. An election this important should appear during a general election, when most people vote.
For immediate release
CONTACT: Anna Bakalis
UTLA Communications Director
(213) 305-9654 (c)
(213) 368-6247 (o)
Abakalis@UTLA.net<mailto:Abakalis@UTLA.net>
To watch the live 1:30 PM press conference, click here<https://www.facebook.com/UTLAnow/videos/2390124311212283/>.
UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl on Measure EE
We are proud of the work we poured into the Measure EE campaign. Our members participated in precinct walks, community events, and phone banks, talking to voters across the city. We know the community fundamentally trusts educators and supports the demands we are making for our schools, with UTLA’s strike in January being the historic case in point.
We faced a scorched-earth opposition, led by the LA Chamber of Commerce and aided by the Howard Jarvis Association and key Trump allies like Geoffrey Palmer. They had one purpose: to defend corporate profits at the expense of the students of our city.
The No on EE forces created lies about how the tax would work and fanned the flames of economic insecurity. They attacked not just LAUSD but the civic institution of public education and the educators who serve our students. They drove a destructive individualistic message that encouraged voters not to think about the needs of our students or the broader city.
Measure EE was just the beginning of the fight for funding sparked by our strike. It’s simply unsustainable for the richest state in the nation to rank 44th out of 50 in per-pupil funding. We are resolved to keep organizing for measures like Schools and Communities First on the November 2020 ballot, which would close commercial property tax loopholes and restore $11 billion for schools and community services.
There were ground-breaking elements to the Measure EE campaign that make us stronger for the work ahead. The City of LA is talking about the chronic underfunding of public schools in a way it never has. We partnered with community organizations focused on increasing voter participation in working-class communities and communities of color. In a district with 85% low-income students and 90% students of color, this is both righteous and necessary. We built a broad community/labor/elected coalition around addressing school funding that has not existed before in LA. That coalition, which includes some unlikely partners, has decidedly landed on the side of progressive taxation — taxation of business and corporations — as the pathway to improved school funding.
The agenda to starve our public schools will not win as long as we continue to build our movement.
Today is hard — but educators face and overcome obstacles every day. There is no other option. Like we do every day, we will continue to fight for our students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
No on EE was not a rejection of our students. It was a rejection of charter schools using limited public funding, waste and mismanagement at Beaudry,corporate control of our schools and the using of our students data for corporate profit. We all know or pupil spending in California is low but that’s because it’s too many hands in our public education allotments. With private charters, mismanagement what funds we do have are being misappropriated. So more funds are needed for public schools, cut from within from the top down.
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Corragio, UTLA members, you fought the good fight. Moreover, as you say in this release, you will continue the fight.
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That’s not what drove the vote, Paula. Voters don’t trust Beaudry – all of it (Beutner, the Board, the management). After all, everyone says they are untrustworthy. UTLA, the charters by pointing out the achievement challenges, parents who are frustrated by the entrenched and bureaucratic obstacles to their real engagement. This isn’t the first time Angelenos reject parcel taxes for LAUSD, it’s just part of a decades old narrative of failure, and UTLA could not overcome its own messaging from the strike that the money was there, hoarded, and lied about to then ask voters to trust the district to manage more money. This was so evident in utla’s own social media pages, where confused teachers posted comments like “wait, where is the money they were hiding? We have to pay (through taxes) for our own gains?” Angelenos are fed up with LAUSD. And the root cause of a lot of the fiscal distress felt across the state is the burden that Jerry Brown shifted to districts to bail out the pension system. In a few years LAUSD will pay 50% of its revenue to pensions and healthcare. It’s time for universal healthcare and for Newsom to rebalance pension obligations. Californians are tax weary. Personally I don’t mind higher taxes, but split roll faces an uphill climb in 2020 regardless of the motivated electorate if voters don’t see good reason to hope for something better, a positive message m, not the blame and shame game EVERYONE is playing.
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I still say that additional tax assessments are not warranted on individual taxpayers, for corporations and businesses, ok. Yes our pension liability is through the roof but that comes from the state not paying its portion in a timely manner, we do need pension reform but not on the backs of already depleted teaching force that was forced out previously for pension relief. Lausd is a cesspool, management that people trust as opposed to outside consultants who take our money but do nothing.
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Paula,
If you oppose taxing individuals, corporations, and businesses, who or what should be taxed?
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