Teachers Union to Campaign for State Sales Tax Hike : Education: The powerful group will seek to get a measure on 1998 ballot. Increase would raise about $3 billion to go directly to public schools.

The powerful California Teachers Assn. plans to put its financial muscle behind a drive to persuade voters to raise about $3 billion annually for public schools and universities by increasing the state’s sales tax by a penny on the dollar.

The CTA state council, the union’s 660-member governing body, decided at a meeting in San Francisco last weekend to begin preparing for a campaign to place a sales tax increase on the 1998 ballot. It would take between 800,000 and 1 million signatures to put the increase before voters. Seven dollars of every $10 raised by the tax would go directly to campuses to be used to reduce class sizes, buy more books and computers, raise salaries, limit tuition increases and other purposes.

Many CTA council members, especially those representing large urban districts such as Los Angeles, favored trying to get the tax initiative on the ballot next year. But others were concerned that, with only a year to go until the November election, the drive would fall short.

The 240,000 members of the CTA are assessing themselves $3.8 million to finance the campaign.

In deciding to wait until 1998, the CTA may find itself up against a well-financed voucher initiative that proposes shifting tax dollars to vouchers for student tuition at private schools. The CTA spent $12.4 million to defeat such a measure in 1993, and a San Diego-based group with far greater financial resources than the previous one is planning to try again in 1998.

This time, CTA officials say, they need to give voters a way to register their support for public schools.

“The last voucher initiative, we had no positive alternative, and we only could say, ‘Don’t do this,’ ” said Frank Graham-Caso, a government teacher at Mira Mesa High School in San Diego and a member of the CTA’s governing board. “If there is a voucher [in 1998], people will have some clear choices and . . . will see the wisdom of what we are proposing.”

He said the CTA’s measure, which is still being drafted, will give parents and teachers power to decide how the money is to be spent. It will also require schools to issue a “report card” on how they are spending the money and the academic progress being made by students.

The state spends about $27 billion on its elementary and secondary schools, making it 41st among the 50 states in per-student spending, and has the largest average class size in the nation.

John Perez, a vice president of the United Teachers-Los Angeles, said his union will try to influence the statewide group to write the ballot measure to ensure that $95 of every $100 spent on education goes directly to school sites, bypassing the central office administration. “Who can be against directing money to the schools?” he asked.

But Maureen DiMarco, the Wilson Administration’s top education expert, said the CTA will have a tough time persuading the public that it needs to raise taxes to support education.

“The public cares about schools being safe and about their kids having a solid foundation of skills that will lead them to a successful and productive adulthood,” she said. “And until the education groups internalize that and address it, the public will not support greater taxes.”