This School Tax Is A Bargain
For just $8.33 per household a month, voters could save hundreds of
L.A. Unified teachers’ jobs and help preserve arts education in
elementary schools.
Those are the headlines over the LA Times highly-paid columnist Steve Lopez’s column today in which he reveals that unlike his newspaper’s editorial board, he supports LAUSD’s $100 per parcel tax to avoid some teachers from being laid off.
“I say yes, and maybe it’s because I have something no member of our
editorial board has: A child who attends an L.A. Unified school,” writes Lopez.
It says a lot about LAUSD that the 10 or so well-paid editorialists at the Times don’t have kids in the city’s public schools, something that puts them in step with thousands of other affluent LA residents.
Like Lopez, I’m a firm believer in public schools and my son is a graduate of Taft High and Berkeley and now is a post-graduate student at UC San Diego. The parents of the 650,000 LAUSD students, nearly 90 percent of them poor, immigrant or minorities, also believe in public schools or can’t afford to buy the education their kids need.
Quite simply, the district is overwhelmed by students with great needs and has failed to make significant strides for three decades in carrying out the reforms needed to meet them or win the confidence of those who can afford private schools.
Writes Lopez: “Times are tough, and people don’t want to dig into their pockets right
now, especially since there’s no citizen oversight written into the
measure. On top of that, the teachers union has stubbornly resisted
needed reforms, the district bureaucracy can be awful and the school
board is no great shakes, either. So do we really want to send these
people more money?”
No, we don’t and the reasons are many.
It’s not because we don’t want to “save the jobs of 350 teachers, along with
400 custodians and campus aides. Seventy-five nurses, counselors and
psychologists will be spared. High school class sizes, already in the
40s, won’t swell any further. And arts programs in the elementary grades
could be preserved,” as Lopez enumerates what the $100 million a year that Measure E would generate.
It’s not even because a parcel tax is the most regressive tax there is. It’s the same $8.33 a month for a tiny cottage in Watts as it is for a Bel Air mansion or an office building worth hundred million dollars.
Voters have backed school bond issue after bond issue — taxes based on the value of property — only to see their money go to build schools that cost up to $500 million, only to see the latest bond issue not even needed for seven years from now.
We’ve seen superintendents and reform plans come and go but we’ve still not seen major improvement in dropout rates or achievement. We’ve seen the mayor take over the schools, at least indirectly, and still not seen the changes we were promised. We’ve recently seen the mayor and district officials collude with the ACLU to stop layoffs of teachers at three impacted schools, two of them directly under the mayor’s control.
We’re seeing the mayor, Superintendent Ramon Cortines and even teacher union leader A.J. Duffy duck the parcel tax campaign, presumably because their standing in the community is so low they would generate more “no” votes than “yes” votes. Instead, the campaign for Measure E is “hoping that if the turnout
is low, only the most passionate voters will take to the polls and
support the schools.”
There’s good reason for running an underground campaign just as events that occurred Tuesday showed.
One of the most important reforms enacted to protect the squandering of taxpayer money at LAUSD was the creation of the Inspector General’s office and the appointment of former FBI agent Don Mullinax to the position.
Mullinax proved so tough and thorough that after a few years, they cut his funding and drove him out of office.
On Tuesday, Jerry Thornton, the current Inspector General, met the same fate. According to word leaking out from the school board’s closed-door session, Thornton — who was largely frozen out by the board and top officials for most of a year — was terminated because
his audits of spending and programs had a “gotcha” tone.
A review of recent audits showed Thornton found P-card abuses like someone at an early childhood education center racking up “$1,100 in dating services” on the card of someone else who was on leave and the “potenti
al for abuse and
misuse” of P-cards for millions of dollars in district and federal stimulus funds.
Of even greater significance is what happened at Verdugo Hills High on Tuesday and how the district is trying to make this scandal go away.
Community activists have long campaigned to get an investigation into LAUSD practices of marking truants present in class for the purpose of collecting the $25 daily attendance payment from the state.
What happened at Verdugo is that Principal Diane Klewitz sent home forms for parents of graduating seniors authorizing their children to go on three-day field trips to get them out of the way while other students were taking standardized tests and still collect the $25 payment..
The trouble was the field trips were for the students to stay at home, something that would not allow for the $25 daily attendance payment — costing $5,000 a day in revenue for the 200 seniors given “stay-cations.”
Klewitz told Howard Blume of the Times she inherited the tradition from her predecessors. In other words, it’s common practice to scam the system and let 17-year-olds party for three days.
“Parents signed a slip saying they’d rather have their children stay
home than sit in an auditorium,” Klewitz said. “There are issues in terms of
safety [when you] ask kids to sit in an auditorium all day. They tend to want to go out and roam the campus or jump the fence
and disappear and roam the streets.”
So being in school is dangerous but being off campus and doing whatever graduating seniors do is safe?
Some parents disagreed and complained and the Times called for comment so the district ordered the kids back to school today and promised to check whether Verdugo cheated in the past.
Don’t expect them to end the practice everywhere else and clean up the truancy issue they have ignored for so long.
These current examples are just small elements in the grand rubric of LAUSD’s failures.
Board member Tamar Galatzan, the only board member to vote against putting the parcel tax on the June ballot, explained her opposition in these terms:
“Now is the time to look at
every single program, how it’s funded, who benefits from it, get rid of the
ones that don’t work and change the ones where the funding mechanism isn’t
benefiting our students.”
That’s exactly what LAUSD needs to do to restore the public trust and get the money it needs to do a better job.
It’s what the district has needed to do for 30 years but the district’s leadership and the union prefer to go on protecting policies that have failed the students and the city as a whole.
I can only hope that Measure E goes down to a resounding defeat!
I don’t know of any other way to tell LAUSD that we’re not going to fall for this bulltokki again; they must clean up their act.
Just like with the mayor and council, we must also vote the school board members out of office and never vote for them again when they run for another office.
Why won’t the media investigate LAUSD?
http://www.examiner.com/x-3311-LA-Public-Education-Examiner~y2010m5d13-Why-wont-the-media-investigate-LAUSD
Like I keep saying, they always want a PARCEL tax, where only homeowners (or more precisely, homeowners trying to hang on)pay for the schools, and renters get off free. If you want to be fair about it, why not tax the parents, beginning at childbirth, in order to pre-pay for their kids education, and tax everone else at a at a slightly lower rate. This includes renters.
Taxing homeowners just is not fair.
The real solution is to tax every household.
We already add fees on DWP bills , such as trash, stormwater, and sewer charges, just add a school fee. The utility bill fee will reach all households.
Until that is done, I will vote NO on all school bond issues that are parcel tax related.
In answer to Anonymous, the rationale for a parcel tax is that property owners, in contrast to renters, benefit financially from a better school system through higher property values. You can debate about whether that actually happens (e.g., if the money is wasted, spent over too diffuse an area to benefit your local neighborhood, or becomes irrelevant when a critical mass of potential homeowners no longer consider the local schools a potential option and therefore no longer pay a higher price for a home in your neighborhood), but it is a logically coherent basis for taxation. A property tax would be more progressive than a parcel tax, to be sure, but my guess is that you wouldn’t like that any better.
On the broader issue, Ron’s objections are symptomatic of the larger difficulties of doing anything in LAUSD. He points to pockets of waste and corruption and aggregate data on failure, suggesting we should do nothing and blow the whole system apart. And yet, there are pockets of success and efficiency and areas where neighborhood parents have returned in droves (check out the changes in demographics for Emerson Middle School in Westwood over the last few years). So, it is difficult to make a case for change the way Ron presents it and yet people who actually have kids in the system like I do really do see change. It is fragile, which is why it is important to nurture it so it can grow and spread, but it is progress nonetheless.
Can baby say, “Prop 13″?
If LAUSD is anything like City Hall, don’t pay another penny in taxes. Both places give very little in return for the billions they suck in with zero accountability.
Arguing about the fairness of taxes misses the whole point of Ron’s piece, IMHO. The following was posted on a local neighborhood group this afternoon:
“I am a parent at Orville Wright Middle school and I am very angry today. Today a girl beat my daughter to a pulp and no one even called to tell me. I have called several times with no reply to the principles office.
They told me they were dealing with something way more serious. (WHAT COULD THAT BE???) My daughter has told me there are fights there everyday.
And the teachers and principles just watch as crowds gather to watch the event.
Now its my daughter who gets a busted up face and she is only in 6th grade.
Now she refuses to go to school.
This school is unbelievably out of control.”
Really think the issue is one of fairness of the tax system?
So, the renters can vote for a property/parcel tax that they won’t have to pay, but property owners cannot raise their rent?
Anon2, I don’t see the logically coherent basis on this type of taxation, especially since renters have kids too. ‘Seems to me that if the only ones being taxed are the property or parcel owners, then they are the only ones who should vote for it. Under the circumstances, this hardly seems like equal representation/protection.
Imagine if there was a “tax the renters only” measure before us and property owners can also vote for it. My guess is folks would call that discrimination.
And all of this probably does not address the huge unfunded pension liability!
Anonymous – the assumption is that renters are future owners of property, so they should have a say in what might impact their ability to buy. Of course, there are flaws in that assumption. Some renters never buy. Also, many landlords will pass along the cost of the tax to the renters in the absence of rent control (although that would then satisfy your concern that only property owners are bearing the burden).
On the issue of whether the tax should apply the same to people who have no children, this is a misguided application of the benefit theory of taxation. It assumes that the only benefit is the education of your children and if you have no children you shouldn’t have to pay. The reality is that a strong school system benefits everyone by providing an educated workforce, reducing crime, increasing economic growth and innovation, etc, in addition to raising property values. Do yuo benefit more if you have kids? Perhaps, but that assumes you are uniquely benefitted by your children’s success. That’s a pretty questionable proposition and assumes something about your kids taking care of you etc. A parent may want their children to succeed because of their own ego and their psychic pleasure, but the tangible benefits are actually quite minimal. We may not like kids and wish people would stop having them, but the reality is that we all benefit by helping children and we all are harmed when children grow up in a bad environment.
Again, Anon2, changing the discusssion to the philsophical debate about social good of education turns us from the issue at hand. Regardles of the amount of money we pour into the LAUSD, without fundamental changes, it is akin to giving alcohol to an alcoholic.
No one is disputing the value of a strong school system; are you disputing the detriment of a bad one? To me, LAUSD is not about educating kids; it is about adult benefits and political power. One example: 36 million dollars annually to give part time cafeteria workers cadillac health care befits is a fine social goal; it just isn’t about educating kids. So, letting go of arts programs is LAUSD’s choice and this citizen won’t back their priorities. Nor I will accept the “educated, put upon sneer” so beloved of proponents of the status quo.
Hi Anon2, it’s me again. You wrote “On the issue of whether the tax should apply the same to people who have no children, this is a misguided application of the benefit theory of taxation.”
That’s not what I meant. Whether or not the renters and property owners have kids is not at issue in my inquiry. We know a sound education impacts everyone, whether or not they have kids. What is at issue is why only property owners should pay a tax for the school systems when renters and property owners have kids who would benefit. Why tax the property owners who are already paying dearly for what they have? Why not also tax the renters (that would be equally wrong)? How about just taxing the renter?
The comment that followed your comment has a valid point as well, but that’s not the question I’m pursuing at this time. I am just so baffled why property owners are the only ones taxed. And, if they are the only ones taxed, why should renters have a say? Until those renters buy property (based on the assumption that they might some day), they shouldn’t have the right to tax someone else’s money until they buy property of their own. I see no equal representation. Either everyone is taxed or no one.
A similar parcel tax for PUSD was soundly defeated in Pasadena this month. More money for schools is like throwing pearls before a swine.
I don’t want to pay for a school system that has a high percentage of illegal alien children. They should be removed from the schools and sent back to their home country for an education. What would the enrollment numbers be and the costs of running the system be if the illegals were removed?
Teachers are taking furlough days, special education stipends are taken away, and now you want to tax the homeowner.
I say NO WAY!
LAUSD cut downtown, close down schools-Sunland Tujunga does not need 5 elementary schools where the capacity is extremely low in each school. Get rid of the Special Education AP’s wo are only wanna be principals who can not make decisions. Get rid of the OCR coaches-OCR has been around now for 10 years-why do we still have coaches? LAUSD has a new name-WASTE!
It is time to throw out the trash.