Politics & Government
Should It Be Easier To Pass School Parcel Taxes in Lamorinda?
There have been 24 parcel tax elections in Lamorinda since 1983. Only five have failed.
If you live in Lamorinda, you can be forgiven for overestimating the prevalence and popularity of parcel taxes. Since 1983 there have been 24 parcel tax elections in Lamorinda and more than three quarters have passed [See table below].
But statewide only one in 10 California school districts have a parcel tax in place, and more than 50 percent of those districts are in the Bay Area. That was just one of the findings in a report Ed Source announced Wednesday looking at almost 30 years of parcel tax data.
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The report comes as a Democratic supermajority in Sacramento eyes amending the state constitution to make it easier for school districts to pass parcel taxes. California’s voters would still have to approve an amendment lowering the passage threshold from two-thirds to 55 percent, but recent polls show that voters are in favor of giving schools more money and more control over how to spend it.
Here are some of the more interesting conclusions from the Ed Source report:
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- Since 1983, there have been 608 parcel tax elections in California. While roughly half passed with a two-thirds majority, 87 percent would have passed if the bar had been set at 55 percent.
- Richer districts are more likely to pass a parcel tax.
- Districts with parcel taxes that received 55 percent of the vote, but still failed, were more likely to have higher numbers of poor students, black students and Latino students.
The EdSource report asks if lowering the threshold to 55 percent would augment Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to provide more money to poor students in the state's public schools, or would it only make it easier for more affluent districts to create new funding sources?
What do you think? Would you support a plan to lower the voting threshold to 55 percent?
5/1/2010
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