What’s next for school bonds?
Before the November election, Proposition 51’s supporters called the $9 billion state bond a lifeline for school districts desperate for safe and updated classrooms, while its opponents lambasted it as a measure written by and for developer and construction interests.
Now that voters have spoken, the biggest question is: What happens next? School districts, many of which have been waiting for millions of state bond dollars to build or upgrade their schools, are eager for the money to start flowing.
Still others want to put a hold on the program until more is done to fix what they say is a broken school facilities funding formula that puts smaller, poorer districts at a disadvantage in the chase for state aid.
At the same time, they recognize that the proposition’s ballot language hamstrings the state from making significant changes in how the funding is allotted, without another vote of the people.
The districts won’t get any money until bonds are actually sold, said Raul Parungao, associate superintendent at Fremont Unified School District, which is severely overcrowded. It’s ultimately up to Gov. Jerry Brown and a fivemember committee, which he heads, to determine when it’s appropriate to sell the bonds.
That power is putting some bond proponents on edge, because the governor has sharply criticized Proposition 51 as a “blunderbuss” effort that does little to fix a deeply flawed facilities funding formula, and instead locks it in for years to come.
“Since the governor was against this bond, and if it’s up to his discretion to issue it, he may not support it,” said Michelle McDonald, a spokeswoman for Dublin Unified School District, which is waiting for $28.8 million from the state for construction of Amador Elementary School. “And whether we’re going to get our money for Amador, we don’t know. We’re just waiting to see what happens.”
Brown plans to honor the will of the people, said H.D. Palmer, deputy director of the state Department of Finance. He explained that state officials will be looking at both market conditions and pending needs to determine when to do a bond sale but that “no one should expect that all bonds will be sold at once.”
“That would be like drinking water out of a fire hose . ... You only sell as much as you need to deal with your identified needs,” Palmer said.
At least Dublin Fremont districts the advantage of and have being able to charge higher developer fees while waiting for the state money. They were among a handful of districts that successfully petitioned the state to charge the higher fees to complete school construction because the previous state bond fund had run out. That should help until state coffers are replenished, McDonald said.
The higher fees get overturned as soon as the state bond fund is renewed by selling new bonds, which is why the state’s building interests also want bond money to start flowing immediately.
Then there’s the lingering worry that $9 billion won’t stretch far enough, and that districts already on the waiting list to receive money won’t get it. Of that total bond amount, $3 billion each would go toward constructing new K-12 public schools and modernizing others. About $1 billion is earmarked for charter schools and vocational education facilities, and $2 billion would go to community college facilities.
Only about $360,000 worth of projects have an actual commitment from the state for reimbursement. The remaining $1.7 billion worth of K-12 public school projects’ applications simply have been acknowledged by the state but not officially reviewed or approved for funding, said Jeff Vincent, deputy director of the Center for Cities & Schools at UC Berkeley, who studies the state’s school construction policies.
“So there is some disagreement in Sacramento on whether the projects on those ‘acknowledged and unfunded lists’ will get state funding or not,” Vincent said. “That’s a big question about this bond, which I don’t think has been settled.
“Many of these applications have been submitted one, two or three years ago, and some of those districts’ projects have already been completed and funded through local bonds, so the question becomes does the state reimburse them or not?” he said.
“This is uncharted territory, whether the state is going to spend money they don’t need to.”
The governor and others say something must be done to help smaller, poorer districts without a strong tax base find other ways to fund school construction. Those districts have a disadvantage in the current system because the funding is doled out on a first-come, first-served basis, without any thought to which districts are in most financial need. In fact, the system requires that even financially struggling districts try to obtain local matching funds first before submitting applications for state money.
Adding to the problem is the complex and convoluted application system. And the financial hardship program, which among other restrictions typically requires a district to show that it failed at least twice to pass a local school construction bond, isn’t doing a good enough job of leveling the playing field, said Shin Green, a principal for Oakland-based Eastshore Consulting, which specializes in school construction financing.
For instance, Ravenswood City School District in East Palo Alto, which has struggled in the past to meet state requirements for matching dollars, would have had to tax its economically struggling residents roughly three or four times what a wealthy school district with a more diverse tax base, such as nearby Menlo Park or Cupertino school districts, he said. With new Google and Facebook corporate campuses built in recent years and adding to East Palo Alto’s tax base, that’s not as much of a problem now. But those requirements are still a real issue for many poorer, often rural districts statewide.
“I’d like to see something equalizing the system so that a kid studying in a farming community in the Central Valley has the same opportunity to get a quality education in updated school facilities as a kid who is going to school in the Bay Area’s Peninsula and Silicon Valley,” Green said.
It’s too soon to know whether the state can do much to reform the current system, given the ballot language, Palmer said. The governor and his administration have been talking about possible regulatory and policy changes to the school construction bond program to root out inequities, inefficiencies and waste. The questions are sure to spur plenty of discussion over the coming year, starting with the State Allocation Board’s next meeting in January.
“There are issues that warrant further work,” Palmer said. “And we want to maximize the effectiveness of all these bond dollars.” an anti-flouride activist from Sunnyvale. “The only people who can mandate a drug are medical doctors.”
Goetze, who said she also believes vaccines and Wi-Fi are unsafe, is not moved by the fact that fluoride is endorsed by the American Dental Association, American Medical Association, CDC, California Department of Public Health, American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization.
Dr. Howard Pollick, a professor of dentistry at UC San Francisco, said studies show fluorosis can occur, but only when fluoride levels are much higher than the U.S. standard of 0.7 parts per million, which is what will be delivered starting Monday in San Jose.
He said that the issue has been studied extensively and that fluoride is safe. In 2011, for example, scientists at the California Environmental Protection Agency reviewed the research and decided not to add fluoride to the state list of carcinogens and harmful chemicals that must be posted by businesses under Proposition 65, a 1986 ballot measure.
“The science is robust on the evidence to support the benefit of fluoridation,” Pollick said. “Over the next five or 10 years, and in generations to come, children, adults, especially the poor and most vulnerable, will experience less tooth decay. And it will save a lot of grief and pain.”