Reject East Side Union High School District’s Measure J

Measure J presents a dilemma for East Side Union High School District voters.

The $60 million bond measure is designed to build 100 units of rental housing to “attract, hire and retain qualified teachers and staff members” at the 13 high schools the East San Jose district serves. It’s a reasonable goal.

But in the last 20 years, East Side Union has issued a whopping

$1.1 billion of school construction bonds. That’s the eighthlargest total of any district in California.

On a per-student basis, that amounts to about $41,000 for each of the approximately 27,000 students the district serves, nearly double the amount, for example, that San Jose Unified’s construction program costs per student.

The $60 million bond measure is relatively small, as bond measures go. But East Side Union voters have approved seven different bond measures in the past 21 years — Measure Z (2016), Measure I (2014), Measure I (2012), Measure E (2008), Measure G (2002) and Measure A (1999) — and an additional one in 1991. There’s a limit to how much property owners should be asked to pay in taxes. Especially in a district that is not in one of the South Bay’s wealthier areas.

Voters should reject Measure J on the March 3 ballot.

To pay off the Measure J bonds, school officials are seeking to add $30 per $100,000 of assessed value to district property owners’ tax bills, or $159 for an average home assessed at $535,000. But district homeowners already pay $98.60 per $100,000 of assessed value to retire the earlier bonds, or $528 a year for that average house.

That’s all on top of the amount homeowners also pay for bonds passed in their respective K-8 school districts.

Of course, East Side Union isn’t the only district working toward supplying housing for teachers. But it’s interesting to note that the only South Bay school district that has done so, Santa Clara Unified, is also the only South Bay district that has more school construction bond debt than East Side Union.

Santa Clara Unified has issued $1.27 billion in bonds in the last 20 years, which amounts to a mind-boggling $81,894 for each of the 15,509 students the district serves.

The teacher housing problem is serious. Only the highest-paid teachers in the Bay Area earn enough to rent an affordable one-bedroom apartment, using the federal definition of affordable housing as 30% or less of household income.

San Jose Unified, San Francisco Unified and Mountain View Whisman School District are among the other Bay Area school districts that have approved employee housing or are considering it.

School districts that have modest school bond debt should be encouraged to experiment with building affordable housing units for teachers and staff and report on the findings. California needs to discover and promote the most financially prudent approaches to solving its housing crisis.

The East Side Union High School District has not positioned itself to lead that effort. Voters should reject Measure J.