Proposition 170: An Empowerment Vote : Let communities decide about paying more for schools

Does California need new schools? The numbers speak for themselves, loudly. At an average of 28 students per class, California’s teacher-student ratio is the highest in the nation. Reducing the average class size to 25 would require a 10% increase in classroom capacity in areas where schools are already full. Or suppose the nation’s worst teacher-student ratio is allowed to remain as bad as it is; even then, with enrollment growing at 180,000 to 200,000 a year, more than 7,000 new classrooms (about 370 elementary schools, at an aggregate cost of $2.8 billion) would be needed every year.

BUILDING FATIGUE: There are those who say that better use of existing facilities is the answer. Year-round schooling has alleviated overcrowding to some extent, but that category of unused capacity is now nearing exhaustion. And, quite apart from its unpopularity with much of the affected population, year-round schooling has an economic downside. Buildings that are constantly in use cannot effectively be maintained. Their useful life grows shorter as a result, with worsened new-construction costs down the line. Busing students from overcrowded, economically depressed areas to less crowded, more affluent areas is another stopgap measure. Los Angeles no longer buses for racial integration; busing has continued as a way to redistribute the students among the available classrooms. But the annual $1,400-per-pupil cost of transporting a student across town is less than the per-pupil bond-servicing costs for new construction of a 1,200-student elementary school. Even the higher cost of high school construction barely exceeds the cost of busing.

Some voters may be frustrated over the actions of teachers unions. Many believe, often without any firsthand experience, that “our schools are a mess.” But only a minority is so blindly antagonistic as to deprive students and teachers alike of a school to meet in. A strong consensus remains that education is one of the basic investments that a society must make in its own prosperity.

MEETING THE NEED: The difficulty is that in California, all but alone among the 50 states, the Constitution (not Proposition 13) requires a two-thirds majority for local general obligation bonds, including those issued to pay for school construction. Proposition 170, on the ballot in the Nov. 2 statewide special election, is not itself a tax increase, but it would permit local districts, for this one purpose, to lift the current 1%-of-value limit on property tax by a simple majority vote. Ideally, the state would pay for new schools and all taxpayers, rather than just homeowners, would incur the resulting debt. But the state has failed to meet this need. Proposition 170 would permit local communities to step in and meet their own needs by property taxation. The Times believes that denying communities the right to do this is the height of folly, and so we strongly urge a “yes” vote on Proposition 170.

Between 1970 and 1990, the Los Angeles Unified School District went from 22% Latino to 63%. Not all public school districts have changed as much as Los Angeles has. But statewide as well as locally, some will vote in favor of an ignorant population rather than vote to educate immigrant Latinos. Some will vote against education for others’ children, now that their own have graduated. To call these voters shortsighted is to be kind. When it comes to schools, as Ben Franklin said, we must all hang together or we shall all hang separately.