Late in the afternoon on Thursday, the Los Angeles Unified School Board voted to put a $7 billion school bond on the November ballot. If the voters pass the bond, the money will be designated to both build new schools and to revamp old schools into smaller, kid-friendlier campuses. It is the largest local school bond in Los Angeles history.
But although the school board members unanimously approved the measure, the response among many of interested parties was not exactly upbeat.
On Wednesday, the Daily News ran a cogent and highly critical editorial stating that, unless the district can better explain why exactly it needs the $7 billion, the voters shouldn’t hand over the money. The DN also pointed out that the LAUSD folks still have quite a bit of money left over from the last building fund.
When some folks balked at such an amorphous goal for so large an amount of cash, school officials came up with a more concrete-sounding plan. Kind of. The bond money, they said, will be for charter schools. A clever pitch, this, since everyone seems to love charter schools and hate the district, which is why thousands of students are abandoning traditional campuses for charters every year.
But even then school officials wouldn’t say how much of that bond money would go to charters. Worse, they would give no written guarantees of anything.
Nevertheless the approval sailed through at around 4:30 p.m. with only a minor amount of pre-vote wrangling. Of the $7 billion, the board voted to give charter schools $450 million or around 6.4 percent. (This was up from the $300 million proposed earlier.)
So were people happy with the outcome? I asked some of the key players what they thought of the vote. Here are their reactions:
A.J DUFFY, UTLA President
“I’m never happy about money going to charter schools. I don’t think voters are going to like it either. This is essentially going to hit homeowners who are about to lose their homes. People are hurting. I think they’re going to look for any excuse to vote it down.”
MONICA GARCIA: School Board President
When I mentioned AJ Duffy’s remarks about voters not being eager for a new property tax burden, Garcia shook her head.
“I trust the people of Los Angeles. Our existing building program has produced $1.8 billion dollars in tax revenue and 247,000 jobs. I believe people of the LA understand that. Although children are the beneficiary, we’re an economic engine, and we impact lives with jobs and with taxes. So, yes, it’ll pass. And yes, I’m happy!”
CAPRICE YOUNG, CEO of the California Charter Schools Association, and former school board president.
“No I’m not happy. We want our equitable share, and $450 million is nowhere near equity. Right now charter students make up twelve percent of the district’s school children—with that number growing with every year. With our growth rate, we should have 20 percent of the money, since this is probably the last school bond that we’ll have for ten years. Ten percent was the minimum. Instead we’ve got, what? a little over six percent?.
Young also said that the charter’s wouldn’t own the structures after they are built, which is another sticking point.
“That means, if the board wanted to they could vote to take the buildings away.
One of the most important issues, said Young, is that the charters would like to administrate the construction their own schools—in part to remove the process from the district’s costly bureaucracy, and also to get themselves out from under the pricey building regulations to which the school district is subject.
“With that money, we could build or renovate 30 schools. But because of their layers of bureaucracy, LAUSD will take the same money and build three schools, and—instead of the building taking 18 months, like it would with us—-it’ll take the district five years. When I was on the school board, there were three levels of bureaucracy overseeing school construction. Now there are seven.”
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The LA Times provides additional background and analysis.
Don’t approve the bond issue. Once that money is wasted, they will come back wanting a special purpose sales tax for the same thing, just to waste that, too. That’s what our school system, hijacked by a bunch of liberal academic non-business people, are trying to do after we approved a bond two years ago with the promise that its approval would avoid a sales tax increase. That’s on top of their raising our ad valorem taxes for education to unbelievable heights.
Don’t trust “educators” doing things “for the children.”
Don’t approve the bond issue. Once that money is wasted, they will come back wanting a special purpose sales tax for the same thing, just to waste that, too.
What???? I am in agreement with Woody, but I would appove any bond measure to dismantle the LAUSD, any create many smaller “charter” school districts.
Lost, the money will be used up on administrative costs before any project is complete. Tell them that they already have enough cash and can just cut out the waste. To educators(?), they always need a little (or a lot) more.
Without commenting on the need for this bond or for its utility I jus want to say that I love the fact that the woodys of this world ALWAYS see wasteful spending on things like education but never seem to question the prision budget (with its $252,000/yr sun for juviniles) or that bloated “Defense” budget.
I’m sure Woody will mention how Sheriff Joe Arpaio (admired by Celeste 🙂 jails are run much cheaper than California’s jails.
Chain gangs, I say! Put ’em on the chain gangs and get some use out of them.
rlc, government schools do waste money–a lot of it. My response is, “Don’t come to me looking for more money until you have cut the waste and proved yourself to be good stewards of the earlier money with which you were entrusted.”