Fighting for fair school construction funding in California

Transcript:

Zaidee Stavely (host): Ever since superintendent Melissa Alderman first arrived in Santa Rita Union School district in Salinas, she’s noticed a lot of classroom floors falling apart.

Alderman: One we noticed that the floor and the wall had actually separated if you were really close to it. You could see outside. It was like, oh my gosh, right? That’s not an ideal learning environment for students.

Zaidee: Santa Rita Union serves about 3,200 kids in elementary and middle school in Monterey County, which is known for its foggy weather.

Alderman: Monterey County, beautiful place to live,

Zaidee: But not so great for portable classrooms.

Alderman: They were placed not over any paving or concrete or a foundation, but on dirt. And it’s very humid, uh, lots of ambient moisture in the air and, you know, so that’s going to come up from our soil.

Zaidee: That means rotting floors and classrooms that smell of mildew.

Alderman: The projected lifespan of a portable placed, the way it is, is about 20, 25 years. We have some that are more than 40 years old.

Zaidee: Superintendent Alderman says they fix damage, like the hole between the floor and the wall, as fast as they can to make classrooms usable. But there’s always more to do. Roofs leak, and alarm systems go off in the middle of the night because it rained too hard and something shorted.

Alderman: And play structures that are, are aging out. Decorative rot, iron fencing around window seals. So if one looks at our facilities needs analysis, you see a lot of those small things. But when you multiply that by the number of windows that have the rust on them by the number of decorative fencing that now have the, the rust and the deterioration on them, then it becomes a much larger scope for us.

Zaidee: Meanwhile, just miles away, the wealthy coastal district of Carmel has modern facilities, top-rate gymasiums, auditoriums, and a green environmental classroom that serves both for cooking and science class. And that’s partly due to a decades old method for funding school construction in California that many say has exacerbated inequalities.

Zaidee: This is Education Beat: Getting to the heart of California schools. I’m Zaidee Stavely. This week: Unequal funding for school construction.

Superintendent Alderman says that for Santa Rita Union School district, being perpetually strapped for cash means getting creative with the funds they have.

Alderman: We are in a situation where to provide some innovative services, we’re having to constantly move puzzle pieces around rather than to be like, you know what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna build a family resource center, we’re just gonna build it from the ground up. So instead we’re trying to be like, can we take this classroom and put an exterior door on it and make a one room family resource center? 

We are not able to, you know, have like a huge, you know, brand new family resource center that has a doctor’s office that has a, a dentist chair that has all of these things in it, right. That some of our neighbors might have. We don’t have a competition track at one of our middle schools or a large gymnasium. You’re almost on the court when you’re in that space.

Zaidee: My colleague John Fensterwald wrote about the battle that’s brewing over fair funding for school construction.

Zaidee: Hi John. 

John: Hey, Zaidee. 

Zaidee: So John, how bad are these inequities between school facilities? 

John: Yeah it’s unquestionably in inequitable, we have at least gone a long way to solving the problem for daily operating money in a school. We have a local control funding formula, and then you have facilities which are funded on a different system, have been for 25 years when the latest system was created. And it just ignores the issue of equity for the most part. 

The comparison between a well-funded school, high school, for example. And those that aren’t, are so apparent when you walk in the building. And it really sends a message to students as well as to how important they are when they go visit other districts that have really nice facilities. And then it, it keeps them from doing the kinds of things that they want to do, larger facilities to bring in the community, say for a community school, for arts centers, every district wants an arts center, but not all can afford it. And so these are the kinds of things, because we don’t have basic standards that every school must meet. We do that for basic health. We know it’s not healthy, but for quality of school facilities, they vary so much. In California. 

Zaidee: So how did we get here, John? What is this formula that we have to, to fund school facilities? 

John: This particular formula was developed before the turn of a century, and it was a way to actually have state school bonds and figure out how we’re gonna help districts. It’s even more help than we had before. Districts contribute 40 cents and, and state contribute 60 cents. But for everybody, no matter whether you’re a property wealthy district that can afford to raise more money because you have more wealth per student than a poor district, particularly smaller districts that don’t even have a tax base to raise it. So it’s so much harder for them to raise, say, a hundred million dollars for a school renovation.

Zaidee: But even if they could raise that money, there’s a, there’s a limit that is put forward by the state, right? Based on the property tax. Can you just explain that? 

John: Yeah. It’s based on your total tax base. You can only raise, uh, 1.25% of your total assessed value in a district for an elementary or high school district, and 2.5% if you’re unified. So if you’re a small elementary district, it’s 1.25%. That’s really limited in what’s, what you can do on top of that. If your tax base is low, because your property values are lower, it just sets a limit as to what you can do before you reach that bond limit.

Under this system, Santa Rita can raise only $7,740 per student in bonds. while the affluent Carmel Unified in the same county can raise $190,000 per student. That’s more than 20 times the funding.

Zaidee: Superintendent Alderman says the difference is obvious.

Alderman: In more coastal school districts, where, you know, the homes are multiple millions of dollars.  And a lot of them also have schools that are of a similar age of my two old schools. But the surrounding buildings, the things that they’ve added, they’re much more modern, right? They’ve got, you know, more of a, maybe a performing arts center or a nice outdoor stadium around a track in a field, right? With outdoor, you know, um, stands. And our parents are bringing their lawn chairs, right?

Zaidee: Santa Rita did actually pass a bond.  But due to the tax base limit, the district couldn’t ask for more than $27 million. Far less than the more than $100 million needed to renovate and repair its four elementary and two middle schools at state standards.

Zaidee: Superintendent Alderman says the money would provide what many districts take for granted: roofs that don’t leak, gutters that are unrusted, sidewalks that aren’t broken up by tree roots. There would be appropriately sized gyms for middle school; the deteriorating middle school track would be paved so that the school could host meets; the 40-year-old portable classrooms sitting on dirt would be replaced with more spacious modular classrooms on concrete foundations. There would also be transitional kindergarten classrooms the district currently can’t build.

But even if the state changed the limit so the district could ask for more money in bonds, Superintendent Alderman worries about what it might mean for the district’s families.

Alderman: We have a lot of free and reduced lunch, um, homeless foster youth, um, English learners. And so our families mirror that. If they could give more, I think they would, but then there becomes that dilemma of we’re overburdening a taxpayer who meets my student demographic.

What would be helpful for us is if the state could consider like a, a different kind of mechanism for providing funds to school districts, um, to better meet our needs while not, you know, taking money away from other, more affluent districts as well, but like how we do our LCFF calculator and LCAP funding for schools, something more like that so that it takes those demographic pieces in consideration.

Zaidee: So John Governor Newsom is expected to put some kind of bond school bond on the ballot for November, right? John? 

John: Yes. Governor Newsom and the legislature, which has to approve the wording and the terms. 

Zaidee: And there’s some pressure, mostly from the organization Public Advocates, right, to reform facility funding, within that bond?

John: That’s right. And well, there is a possibility of a lawsuit, uh, lingering over this or hangover this, that is public advocates, which has brought, uh, lawsuits before and claims over inequitable funding. So it’s, it’s serious when it makes this threat and it says, um, we’re going, this is very similar to the case called Serrano, which gates back to the 70 in 1970s in which the court said, yes, raising money by property taxes to run your school is unconstitutional because it denies all kids the same opportunity to get an equal education. It was a major national case. But here, um, public advocates say there’s nothing different between the way you raise money under property taxes for facilities as it is for running a school. If it’s unconstitutional for one, it’s unconstitutional for the other. 

ZAIDEE: What other districts did you come across in your reporting that really exemplify this funding disparity?

John: Yeah. One of the districts that is in the public advocate’s complaint is Lynwood Unified, which is near Los Angeles. That’s a perfect example of what equity means because back in the, in the fifties or sixties, seventies, they put highways through Lynwood, which is, uh, a minority, largely black and Latino communities with low. And what putting those highways through the middle of their district did was to force, was to pl that led to a plunge in property values that that district has been struggling with for 50 years. And so that’s another example of a district. It’s not a small, it’s not a small rural district. It’s a metropolitan district that has this problem that we created, and now it has very inadequate facilities. I mean, it’s got leaky roofs in the winter, it’s got mold. And so Lynwood is an example of a district that not only would get it, but it deserves to get a bigger share of money. 

Zaidee: And so what is public advocates, um, proposing to do? 

John: Well, public advocates created a sliding scale. It’s based on what the state of Kansas does. And it says if you are a really poor district, we’ll give you as much as 95%, you put up 5%, and the state will contribute 95, uh, 5%. And if you are a wealthy district, you put up 95 and a state will give you five. Um, that’s at the extremes. The Center for Cities and Schools at Berkeley has proposed a 20 and 80%, which, which creates less distortions at the extreme and a little bit more, uh, the same for everyone, though it still is more equitable, so we don’t know where it’s going to end up. I mean, realistically under this system that public advocates creates, um, Los Angeles would get 55% instead of 60%. Oakland would too. It’s still a big match. 

Zaidee: Santa Rita would be one of the districts that would get significantly more state funding under Public Advocates’ proposal. Instead of a 60% match for all districts, the districts with the most property wealth — Beverly Hills, Carmel Valley, San Francisco Unified, and Sunnyvale School District Elementary in Silicon Valley — would receive a 5% state match and the districts would have to contribute 95% of the project’s cost.

Those with the lowest property values —Bakersfield, Dinuba, Lindsay, San Bernardino City and Fresno Unified — would get a 95% match for contributing 5%.

Santa Rita would get 87% state funding for contributing a 13% local match.

Zaidee: John, What do others say about it? Is there anyone who has a different proposal for how to make the funding more fair?

John: I think the, the folks who have controlled what the bonds look like called CASH, it’s called Coalition for adequate School housing. And it’s really appropriate, CASH, because they provide the money to run the bond measures. Government doesn’t back it. It’s outside intricacies or construction firms, architects and districts themselves, some of whom have benefited the most, but not all. It’s a, it’s a coalition, but they’ve been satisfied with the way the system has worked. It’s, it does offer an alternative. It is saying, look, we’ll just raise the por portion of the bond that we help smaller districts. We raise the portion for hardship, we’ll give technical help to school districts that can’t, can’t compete for a bond. And that’s been a serious problem, but it doesn’t really deal with the fundamental problem of giving every district the same match, same percentage, and you’ll never get to equity. You’ll just raise the cost. If you say poor district will give you 70%, uh, instead of 60%, but as long as you’ve got 60% for everybody, you can’t really realistically create an equitable system. 

Zaidee: John, do you have a sense yet of what, um, of, of whether the governor, um, or the legislature is listening to these proposals? 

John: I don’t. I know that public advocates in the Center for Cities and Schools have, have shared their information, made a pitch. The only thing that we know is that negotiations are continuing. The word I get that is that there will be a bond and it will be around $10 billion and it won’t include higher education facilities. That was a big issue, but we just don’t know how the formula will be determined and whether public advocates and others make the case have made the case, uh, that persuaded the significant change. 

Zaidee: But there’s a lot of other things, a a lot of other pressures or demands that kind of need to be, or that are being asked to be included in this bond as well. Right, John? 

John: Great point. Yes, TK, transitional kindergarten facilities, we’ve created a new grade. The governor had put several billion dollars in the state budget. He took it out, be on the assumption that there would be a school bond and it would be in there. We’ve a lot of attention with fires and floods to paying attention to climate resilient schools. It’s really important. We never thought about that 50 years ago when we set up this program. Uh, we have community schools. We wanna bring the community into schools and health facilities and do more things in schools than we have traditionally done. We need buildings for that. We need facilities, all this, we have lead and water. We still want to take care of that problem. So all these are sort of set asides before you get to the basic function of how do we do simply modernize or create a new school, uh, with, with money that we’ve always devoted to the purpose. 

Zaidee: How likely do you think it would be that voters would pass a school bond? 

John: Well, voters have always passed school bonds until 2020. And there are lots of different reasons why it didn’t. One was the very unfortunate name, coincidentally, it was Prop 13. It, that was a number on the ballot, and people associated it with prop 13 of tax limitation. And so people were confused. It would also happened at the time that Covid was emerging. So there was skepticism, there was worry, but nonetheless, that’s made this, that has made, um, proponents for a bond a little nervous about the next school bond. So it will take an effort to pass it, no question. 

Zaidee: Okay. And do you think that including the inequity portion would affect that at all? 

John: I think one of the arguments will be from CASH, which is that once you get away from a system that’s uniform, everybody will start saying what’s in it for me? And to say, wait a minute, you know, I used to get 60%, now I’m getting 40%. Um, I think a, it will be important for the governor to go out and say, Hey, Fresno, San Bernardino, big districts, you’re gonna get a lot of money to take care of your problems with this and other districts, you’re still getting a sizable share of state aid. It works for everybody. 

It will take an effort by the governor to go out and explain why we’re moving from a system where everybody got the same share to a system where the most neediest districts neediest defined, not in terms of student need, but in terms of property wealth, why it’s so important that you create a new system. That’s what fairness is. But the governor’s gonna have to make a case for equity in a way that Jerry Brown made the case for the local control funding formula back in, in 2012. And that was very effective in getting the legislature to pass it. Now he’s gotta go out and say, voters, this is why it’s important that we create a new system and it will still work for everybody. 

Zaidee: Santa Rita Union School District Supt Melissa Alderman says the community there is invested in the schools.

Alderman: A lot of our families are like, oh, I went to school there. My children go there, my grandchildren now go there. Um, you know, so we’re knocking on doors and people are like, oh yeah, I went to school over at La Jolla, um, and in 1970, and so their heart is still in it, right? Even they’re, they’re way past, you know, having a child in the school, right?

Zaidee: She says even without as much facilities funding as other districts, hers  is doing a lot with a little.

Alderman: I invite people, uh, I, I’m like, come see what we do in spite of that, right? 

Zaidee: She says even the few changes the district has been able to do have gotten her community excited. They recently put in a new restroom facility at one of their elementary schools.

Alderman: And like our students were outside watching this happen, just thought it was like a magical experience that they’re watching a building come in and get placed. And like, parents were invited to come over. And so we had some parents out there taking pictures of their kids and seeing this go in, you know, knowing that it’s, for them. And so they get really excited. It generates a lot of excitement and joy in our community.

Zaidee: Still, she’s hopeful the state changes the formula, so Santa Rita can do even more.

Alderman: We’d be able to connect our community with resources, um, at, at our school sites, uh, with more ease. None of our fencing would be rusting. It would all be pristine. None of our playgrounds would have an area that we can’t use this playground right now because we’ve gotta have someone come in and put a new coating on that or replace the broken slide. In an ideal situation with all the money in the world, right, we, our, our campuses would have great, um, bike paths to them as well. Our communities would be, would be beautified by, by what our school sites now look like and can provide for our community. 

 

CREDITS:

Zaidee: Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of Education Beat: Getting to the heart of California schools. A production of EdSource.

You can find a link to John’s story in our podcast notes and at EdSource dot org.

Our producer is Coby McDonald.

Special thanks to our guests Melissa Alderman and reporter John Fensterwald.

And to our managing editor, Adam Eisenberg.

Our theme music is from Blue Dot Sessions.

This episode was brought to you by the Silver Giving Foundation.

I’m Zaidee Stavely. Join us next week. And subscribe so you won’t miss an episode.