Voters likely facing a November election ballot crowded with education-related initiatives will now have one fewer issue to decide.
The author of a vaguely defined proposed constitutional amendment to require the state and school districts to “provide all public school students with high-quality public schools” has decided to postpone the campaign two years.
“We have also decided that we are best positioned to go forward with a ballot initiative in the 2026 election cycle. This will give us the greatest opportunity to develop the broad-based public support and the necessary financial capacity to ensure success,” wrote David Welch, a Bay Area entrepreneur and the founder and chair of the nonprofit group Students Matter, in an email to supporters last week.
Welch and Students Matter previously underwrote Vergara v. the State of California and the California Teachers Association, an unsuccessful lawsuit filed in 2012 that challenged layoffs by seniority and other teacher workplace protections as disproportionately infringing low-income students’ educational rights.
California would become the first state to add “high quality” as a requirement for creating and funding public schools, although advocates are raising this idea with legislatures in other states, too, according to supporters.
In 1849, the California Constitution established children’s right to attend “free” public schools for at least six months each year. But it didn’t provide guidance on what a good education means or the resources needed to attain it.
In intentionally broad language, the one-sentence amendment, in its latest version, would read, “The state and its school districts shall provide all public school students with high-quality public schools, defined as schools that equip them with the tools necessary to participate fully in our economy, our society, and our democracy.”
Fleshing that out, over time, would be in the hands of the courts and the Legislature. They would determine whether high quality should be determined by academic standards and equitable opportunities for all students to achieve them. They’d decide the measures of high quality: teacher-student ratios, dollars per student, staff retention, preparation for post-graduation success, or student well-being.
In 2016, after years of litigation, the California Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a lower court decision in Campaign for Quality Education v. the State of California that the constitution doesn’t guarantee any level of funding or level of quality. That, a Superior Court judge ruled, is for the Legislature to decide. In a sharp dissent from the Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision, Justice Goodwin Liu said it was regrettable that the court didn’t explore what is meant by a fundamental right to an education. California’s children deserve to know whether it is “a paper promise or a real guarantee,” he wrote.
Passage of the initiative would reignite that debate.
John Affeldt, managing director for Public Advocates, which represented plaintiffs in the lawsuit, maintains the court erred by not recognizing previous decisions that established education as a fundamental right “precisely because it meaningfully prepares students to succeed in college, career and as effective citizens.”
But Affeldt agreed that the initiative “essentially overrules the Court of Appeal’s decision that there is no guarantee of an education of any particular quality.”
“Our community partners would love to see (the appellate court’s decision) fall by the wayside,” he said. It could lead to a tangle of lawsuits initiated by individuals and organizations with the money to litigate. Some plaintiffs may want to relitigate the Vergara lawsuit or strengthen approval of charter schools with a proven track record. Others might cite the amendment to thwart funding cuts or to demand effective reading instruction strategies statewide.
Welch, in his email, said the amendment would empower parents and give legislators “a constitutional North Star” for creating better education policies.
Conservative groups and LGBTQ+ rights supporters protest outside the Glendale Unified School District offices in Glendale on June 6, 2023. Several hundred people gathered at district headquarters, split between those who support or oppose teaching that exposes youngsters to LGBTQ+ issues in schools.
Credit: Keith Birmingham/The Orange County Register via AP
California activists seeking to rein in transgender children’s rights to care and self-expression failed to place a trifecta of restrictions on the November ballot.
The organization Students First: Protect Kids California started too late to consolidate their three separate initiatives into one, and its signature-gathering came up short of the 546,651 verifiable signatures that had to be collected within six months to make the presidential election ballot. The goal was to collect 800,000 signatures to be safe.
But battles over transgender issues will continue to burn bright in courts, school districts and the Legislature. Despite a setback, initiative organizers were buoyed by the 400,000 signatures that thousands of volunteers collected. They are confident that they will attract more donations and enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot two years from now — and find more support than leaders in heavily Democratic California assume exists.
“We’re very confident that voters would pass this if it gets to the ballot box,” said Jonathan Zachreson, a Roseville City school board member and co-founder of Protect Kids California. “We gathered more signatures for a statewide initiative than any all-volunteer effort in the history of California.”
Prohibit transgender female students in grades seven and up from participating in female sports while restricting gender-segregated bathrooms and locker room facilities to students assigned that gender at birth. The initiative would overturn a decade-old state law that requires schools to accommodate a student’s gender identity in their choice of sports and activities.
Ban gender-affirming health care for transgender patients under 18.
Require schools to notify parents if a student identifies as transgender through actions like switching a name or to a pronoun associated with a different gender, joining a sports team or using a bathroom that doesn’t match the student’s sex assigned at birth or school record.
The last issue has sparked a firestorm within the past year.
Last week, a Democratic legislator introduced a late-session bill that would preempt mandatory parental notification. Assembly Bill 1955, by Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-San Diego, would prohibit school districts from adopting a mandatory parental notification policy and bar them from punishing teachers who defy outing policies of LGBTQ+ students.
Last year, Assemblymember Bill Essayli, R-Corona, introduced a bill that would require parental notification, but AB 1314 died in the Assembly Education Committee without getting a hearing. Committee Chair Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, reasoned the bill would “potentially provide a forum for increasingly hateful rhetoric targeting LGBTQ youth.”
Ward cited surveys of transgender and gender nonconforming youths that found most felt unsafe or unsupported at home. In one national survey, 10% reported someone at home had been violent toward them because they were transgender, and 15% had run away or were kicked out of home because they were transgender.
The California Department of Education has issued guidance that warns that parental notification policies would violate students’ privacy rights and cites a California School Boards Association model policy that urges districts to protect students’ gender preferences.
But Zachreson argues that even if children have a right to gender privacy that excludes their parents, which he denies exists, students waive it through their actions. “At school, their teachers know about it, their peers and volunteers know about it, other kids’ parents know about it — and yet the child’s own parent doesn’t know that the school is actively participating in the social transition,” he said.
In some instances, he said, schools are actively taking steps to keep name changes and other forms of gender expression secret from the parents.
“What we’re saying is, no, you can’t do that. You have to involve the parents in those decisions,” he said.
Ward responds that many teachers don’t want to be coerced to interfere with students’ privacy and gender preferences. “Teachers have a job to do,” he said. “They are not the gender police.”
A half-dozen school districts with conservative boards, including Rocklin, Temecula Valley and Chino Valley, have adopted mandatory parental notification policies. Last fall, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued Chino Valley, arguing its policy is discriminatory. A state Superior Court judge in San Bernardino agreed that it violated the federal equal protection clause and granted a preliminary injunction. The case is on appeal.
Last July, a judge for the U.S. District of Eastern California threw out a parent’s lawsuit against Chico Unified for its policy prohibiting disclosure of a student’s transgender status to their parent without the student’s explicit consent. The court ruled that it was appropriate for the district to allow students to disclose their gender identity to their parents “on their own terms.” Bonta and attorneys general from 15 states filed briefs supporting Chico Unified; the case, too, is on appeal.
While some teachers vow to sue if required to out transgender students to their parents, a federal judge in Southern California sided with two teachers who sued Escondido Union School District for violating their religious beliefs by requiring them to withhold information to parents about the gender transition of children. The judge issued a preliminary injunction against the district and then ordered the return of the suspended teachers to the classroom.
No California appellate court has issued a ruling on parent notification, and it will probably take the U.S. Supreme Court for a definitive decision. Essayli pledged to take a case there.
The national picture
Seven states, all in the deeply red Midwest and South, have laws requiring identification of transgender students to their parents, while five, including Florida and Arizona, don’t require it but encourage districts to adopt ther own version, according to the Movement Advancement Project or MAP, an independent nonprofit.
Two dozen states, including Florida, Texas, and many Southern and Midwest states ban best-practice health care, medication and surgical care for transgender youth, and six states, including Florida, make it a felony to provide surgical care for transgender care. Proponents cite the decision in March by the English public health system to prohibit youths under 16 from beginning a medical gender transition to bolster the case for tighter restrictions in the United States.
California has taken the opposite position; it is one of 15 like-minded states and the District of Columbia with shield laws to protect access to transgender health care. They include New York, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Massachusetts.
Twenty-five states have laws or regulations banning the participation of 13- to 17-year-old transgender youth in participating in sports consistent with their gender identification.
Not one solidly blue state is among those that have adopted the restrictions that Protect Kids California is calling for. But Zachreson and co-founder Erin Friday insist that contrary to the strong opposition in the Legislature, California voters would be open to their proposals. They point to favorable results in a survey of 1,000 California likely voters by the Republican-leaning, conservative pollster Spry Strategies last November.
59% said they would support and 29% would oppose legislation that “restricts people who are biologically male, but who now identify as women, from playing on girl’s sports teams and from sharing facilities that have traditionally been reserved for women.”
72% said they agreed, and 21% disagreed that “parents should be notified if their child identifies as transgender in school.”
21% said they agreed, and 64% disagreed that “children who say they identify as transgender should be allowed to undergo surgeries to try to change them to the opposite sex or take off-label medications and hormones.”
The voters surveyed were geographically representative and reflective of party affiliation, but not demographically: The respondents were mostly white and over 60, and, in a progressive state, were divided roughly evenly among conservatives, moderates and liberals.
Two versions of protecting children
Both sides in this divisive cultural issue say they’re motivated to protect children. One side says it’s protecting transgender children to live as they are, without bias and prejudice that contribute to despair and suicidal thoughts. The other side says it’s protecting kids from coercion to explore who they aren’t, from gender confusion and exposure to values at odds with their family’s.
Zachreson and Friday wanted to title their initiative “Protect Kids of California Act of 2024.” But Bonta, whose office reviews initiatives’ titles and summaries, chose instead “Restrict Rights of Transgender Youth. Initiative Statute.” Zachreson and Friday, an attorney, appealed the decision, but a Superior Court judge in Sacramento upheld Bonta’s wording, which he said was accurate, not misleading or prejudicial.
Zachreson is appealing again. A more objective title and summary would make a huge difference, he said, by attracting financial backing to hire signature collectors and the support and resources of the California Republican Party, which declined to endorse the initiative. That was a strategic mistake in an election year when turnout will be critical.
”The people who support the initiative are passionate about it,” he said.
Political observer Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine University, agreed that the gender debate could have motivated Republicans and swing voters to go to the polls.
“There’s no question that the Attorney General’s ballot language had a devastating effect on the initiative’s supporters, and it could have almost as much of an impact on Republican congressional candidates this fall,” he said.
Construction site at Murray Elementary in Dublin Unified in 2022.
Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
Legislators are poised to place a $10 billion construction bond for K-12 schools and community colleges on the Nov. 5 statewide ballot. If voters agree, the money will replenish a pool of state matching money that ran dry for building new schools and for fixing old ones – benefiting many districts.
With 34 authors and co-authors, Assembly Bill 247, laying out the details of the bond, is expected to pass easily. It will receive a hearing today, only two days after it was made public after weeks of negotiations. The Assembly and Senate are expected to approve it on Wednesday, the deadline for final wording for November initiatives. Approval will require two-thirds majority support.
“California urgently needs a statewide school bond to repair dilapidated and unsafe school facilities and to invest in our children to meet 21st century educational and workforce needs,” stated Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance), chair of the Assembly Education Committee and primary author of AB 247.
The last school construction bond, passed in 2016, was for $9 billion. Since then, needs have piled up. The Legislature has added a new grade, transitional kindergarten, and appropriated $4 billion to turn schools into community schools, demanding more space for services, from tutoring to mental health. Increasing threats from flooding, heat, and fires raise the need for climate-resilient responses, from shade structures to energy and air conditioning upgrades.
The bond will allow districts to use the money for all of those purposes and seek a supplemental grant to construct or renovate transitional kindergarten classrooms and build gyms, all-purpose rooms, or kitchens in schools that lack them. The bond would also set aside $150 million to remove lead from school water.
School districts must pass bonds through property taxes to take advantage of state subsidies. Critics have long charged that the formula for matching money—60% of any qualifying cost of a modernization project and 50% for new construction—has sharply disadvantaged school districts with low property values per student. With larger tax bases and the ability to spread the tax burden, property-rich districts can issue larger bonds, gobbling up a disproportionate share of the state-matching money.
The state’s $10 million bond will use a slightly different formula, offering a little more to districts with lower property rates. But the system will remain largely intact – and unconstitutional, said reform advocate John Affeldt, managing attorney for the public interest law firm Public Advocates. In February, it filed a complaint with state officials, threatening a lawsuit on the grounds that the facilities program discriminates against students in low-wealth districts and denies them an opportunity for an equal education.
The bill’s authors have slightly modified the distribution formula. A sliding-scale system will give districts with high rates of low-income students and, to a lesser extent, low assessed property per student as much as an additional 5 percentage point match: 65% for renovations and 55% for new construction.
Public Advocates recommended using assessed property value per student, which it says is the most important variable when measuring capacity to raise local money to modernize schools, as the yardstick to determine the size of districts’ state match.
The bill creates a point system for rewarding extra money that emphasizes the percentage of low-income students, foster children, and English learners in a district. Affeldt said it likely will award Los Angeles Unified, with a high rate of poor students but above-average property tax wealth per student, extra undeserved state money.
The maximum 65% match won’t help property-poor districts, from 3,500-student Del Norte Unified in the rural north to 46,000-student San Bernardino City Unified, highlighted in Public Advocates’ complaint. Districts like these districts would need an 80% to 90% state match to raise enough money to fix critical conditions and add facilities that property-wealthy districts take for granted – but there cannot be enough funding for them as long as every district is guaranteed a 60% state match, Affleld said.
Public Advocates will consult the residents and community organizations it represents in property-poor districts about what the next step will be, Affeldt said. “But what I can say is the Legislature could not have written a better roadmap to get sued.”
The $10 billion bond will be divided as follows:
$8.5 billion to K-12. Of that:
$3.3 billion for new construction, which will include seismic retrofits, climate measures, preschool and health facilities, and replacement of unrepairable school buildings at least 75 years old;
$4 billion for modernization, which would include replacing portables at least 20 years old and $115 million carved out for the lead in water abatement;
$600 million for qualifying charter schools;
$600 million for career technical education facilities.
$1.5 billion for community colleges.
The $8.5 billion will cover only a portion of districts’ needs, and more than $3 billion may already be spoken for. The State Allocations Board keeps a list of approved projects that have not received funding. As with past state construction bonds, the bill would put these projects at the front of a new line; they’d get first dibs on the new money.
Funding for the state bond will be distributed, as in the past, on a first-come, first-served basis for those districts that can navigate the complex application process. Here, too, critics say favors large districts, which have full-time facilities staff who are well-versed in the system, and small property-wealthy districts that can afford consultants.
The authors of AB 247 have included two provisions to mitigate this. It will send the California Department of Education $5 million to provide technical expertise for completing applications for priority schools in small districts — those with fewer than 2,500 students with low assessed value per student and high numbers of low-income students.
Additionally, the bill calls for setting aside 10% of the new construction and modernization money for small districts and front them a piece of their expected award for grant management. However, the set-aside applies to all small districts, including property-wealthy districts that could consume a big share of the 10% total.
In another nod to fairness, the bond will expand financial hardship assistance in which the state covers the full cost of projects for districts too small to issue a bond; since 1998, these districts have received about 3% of state bond money. Eligibility would increase from a maximum of $5 million in bonding capacity to $15 million.
California has no regular or consistent method of helping with school facilities. Since 1998, when the current formula for sharing state bond proceeds took effect, voters have approved $54 billion in bonding. A string of successful bond approvals was broken in 2020 when voters defeated a proposed $15 billion bond measure, which, by bad luck of the draw, was Proposition 13. Voters may have confused it with the anti-tax measure of the same number in 1978.
Prop. 13 would have given CSU and UC $4 billion of the total. A bill competing with AB 247 would have, too. Weeks of negotiations settled with a smaller bond and no money for the universities. And that cleared the way for a separate $10 billion non-education bond that will appear on the Nov. 5 ballot. It will focus on climate change, with funding to shore up defenses against wildfires, floods, and rising sea levels.
Voters in November will decide whether to give the Los Angeles Unified School District $9 billion in bond money to upgrade and improve school facilities, the school board decided unanimously Wednesday.
The bond is the largest ever put on the ballot by Los Angeles Unified and is just shy of a statewide school bond measure for $10 billion that will also be on the November ballot. For LAUSD’s bond measure to pass, at least 55% of voters will need to vote in favor — which would lead to an uptick in property taxes by roughly $25.04 for every $100,000 of assessed value, according to a district estimate.
District officials stated that the money is critical, and its schools’ needs urgent.
“We have seen schools that are built as Taj Mahals, with the latest and greatest technology, with beautiful green spaces, with outdoor classrooms, with stunning athletic facilities,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said Wednesday. “Then you drive down the road one mile, and you see a completely different world that I cannot explain, and frankly, I cannot accept.”
More than 60% of LAUSD campuses are at least a half-century old, according to a board report. And schools across the district have more than $80 billion “of unfunded school facility and technology needs.”
Meanwhile, the costs of construction continue to grow — and have soared by 36% in the past four years, according to the report.
If passed, the $9 billion in bond money would help with efforts, including:
Ensuring schools have adequate safety features and are seismically sound
Modernizing campuses in-keeping with “21st century learning”
Improving disability access
Reducing discrepancies across older and newer schools
Expanding outdoor spaces, transitioning to a new food service model and improving energy efficiency
According to district materials, roughly “525 school buildings may need to be retrofitted, modernized, or replaced for earthquake safety.”
Amid widespread support at Wednesday’s meeting, Michael Hamner, the chair of LAUSD’s Bond Oversight Committee, said the district did not involve his committee enough in the bond’s development.
“While we understand the district’s infrastructure needs are greater than the pool of resources currently available to fund them, the process by which this bond measure was developed and put forward, without consultation of key stakeholders groups such as ourselves — and therefore outside public view — prevents us from providing any meaningful comment,” he said Wednesday.
In response, Carvalho stated that while the process of moving forward with this bond was condensed, the district will “not spare any opportunity” to consider the views of various stakeholders.
Amidst a declining district enrollment, some have also claimed the district should wait to move forward with a bond measure until they have a better understanding of their needs — especially as LAUSD is relying on taxpayers’ money.
Carvalho doubled down, however, on the project’s urgency.
He said that regardless of potential changes to enrollment and square footage, the district’s “critical need for facilities improvement will still be by far an excess of what we currently have and what we will have in the near future.”
According to school board member Rocio Rivas, improved facilities are associated with better academic outcomes, improved attendance and better mental health among students.
“Kids know when they have not the best — they don’t have it as good,” Board President Jackie Goldberg said Wednesday. “And they do feel, somehow or another, that maybe [they’re] just not worth as much.”
West Contra Costa Unified’s Stege Elementary School in Richmond.
Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
More than 1 in 4 school districts are asking local voters to approve a record $39 billion in school construction bonds on the Nov. 5 ballot. Those that pass will jockey for some of the $10 billion in matching state funding that Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature are asking voters to approve by passing Proposition 2.
The facility needs of districts are huge and growing, even as the state’s overall enrollment is projected to decline over the next two decades.
Decades-old “portable” classrooms are falling apart; many air conditioners are malfunctioning, and classrooms without them are sweltering. Roofs leak, plumbing is corroding, wiring is fraying.
Parents worry about open access to insecure campuses. Schools lack room for new transitional kindergarten classes and plans for climate-resilient, energy-efficient buildings. Increasingly popular career and vocational education programs need up-to-date spaces.
Districts’ priorities will vary, and so will their capacity to pay for them. As in the past, districts with high property values, which often correlate to higher-than-average incomes of homeowners, will have a leg up on their property-poor neighbors in terms of what they can ask their taxpayers to approve. Some districts will check off items on their wish list; other districts will resort to triage, fixing what’s most falling apart.
In March 2020, amid first reports of a new pandemic on the horizon, statewide voters defeated a state construction bond with an unlucky ballot number. As a result, the state fell further behind in helping districts repair and rebuild school facilities.
“The defeat of Proposition 13 in 2020 and the pandemic made local districts more hesitant to put bonds on the ballot in 2022, so there is a lot of pent-up need,” said Sara Hinkley, California program manager for the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley, which has extensively analyzed facilities needs in the state.
“The number of bond measures and the total amount reflect the aging and deferred maintenance of California schools, as well as the increasing urgency of HVAC and schoolyard upgrades to grapple with extreme heat.”
The center estimates that 85% of classrooms in California are more than 25 years old; 30% are between 50 and 70 years old, and about 10% are 70 years old or older.
Proposition 2 won’t significantly reform a first-come, first-served funding system if it passes, but it will clear out a backlog of unfunded school projects and partially replenish a state-building fund that has run dry.
With so much on the ballot competing for attention, Proposition 2 may escape many voters’ attention. Here are answers to questions that should help you fill out your ballot.
What’s on the ballot this year?
School districts have placed 252 bond proposals to raise $39.3 billion; 15 community college districts are asking voters to pass $10.6 billion worth of bonds, for a total of 267 proposed bonds valued at $49.9 billion. They range from a proposed $9 billion bond issue in Los Angeles, the state’s largest district, to $3 million sought by Pleasant View Elementary School District for repairs to its only school in Porterville.
How is school construction funded?
Unlike school districts’ operating money, which mostly comes from the state’s general fund, school construction and repairs remain largely a local responsibility, paid for by bonds funded by property taxes. Over the past 20 years, voters approved $181 billion in local bonds for public school and community college facility projects, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
That compares with $31.8 billion over the same period in state facilities bonds passed for school district and community college construction, plus $4.6 billion from the general fund that Gov. Gavin Newsom directed toward school construction. Altogether, the state has chosen to bear only 17% — one-sixth — of the total costs of school construction since 2001.
Bonds are essentially loans that are paid back, commonly over 25 or 30 years, with interest. In the past 10 years, interest rates have ranged from about 2% to nearly 5% and now are coming down again. The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates it would cost the general fund about $500 million annually for 35 years to pay back Proposition 2’s principal and interest.
What does it take to pass a bond?
The passage of a local bond requires a 55% approval rate. Despite the higher threshold than a simple majority, voters have approved 80% of local bonds on the ballot since 2001, according to CaliforniaFinance.com. The exception was in 2020, when voters defeated about half of local bonds, along with Proposition 13. The passage rate bounced back in 2022 to 72% — perhaps a good omen for proposals on Nov. 5 .
It takes only a 50% majority to pass a state construction bond. A voter survey in September by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 54% of likely voters said they would vote yes on Proposition 2, with 44% voting no.
The bulk of state funding for school and community college construction came in the early 2000s, during fast-growing enrollment and boom years for the state economy. However, the state issued no state bonds for a decade after 2006. The 2016 bond, Proposition 51, the last that voters approved, allocated $7 billion for K-12 and $2 billion for the state’s 115 community colleges. All of that funding has been distributed.
Are there limits to how much districts can tax property owners for school bonds?
Yes. Property taxes from school construction are capped at $60 per $100,000 of assessed valuation for unified districts, $30 per $100,000 for elementary or high school districts, and $25 per $100,000 for community college districts. A person whose home assessed value is at $400,000 (often significantly less than the market value) could pay up to $240 in annual property taxes in a unified district to pay off bonds’ principal and interest. Districts will stretch out the timeline for projects to stay under the limit.
How will Proposition 2 be divvied up?
The $10 billion will split:
$1.5 billion for community colleges
$8.5 billion for TK-12 districts, allocated as follows:
$4 billion for repairs, replacement of portables at least 20 years old, and other modernization work
$3.3 billion for new construction
$600 million for facilities for career and technical education programs
$600 million for facilities for charter schools
$115 million set aside to remove lead in school water
Will all of this money go toward new projects?
No.
Unfunded projects left over from Prop. 51 in 2016 that are deemed eligible for funding will go to the front of the line. That’s how the system worked in the past when there wasn’t enough money to go around, and the Legislature applied the same language to Prop. 2. The rationale is that districts spent time and money hiring architects and engineers and drawing up plans, and shouldn’t be penalized for efforts done in good faith.
Those existing projects could consume half of the $8.5 billion for TK-12 funding. As of Aug. 31, the Office of Public Instruction, which tracks projects for funding, reported 1,000 school projects requesting $3.9 billion were already in line, with requests dating back to 2022. These break down to 812 modernization projects potentially eligible for $2.6 billion and 189 new construction projects eligible for $1.3 billion. The deadline for school districts to apply is Oct. 31, so the list may yet grow.
The Office of Public Construction cautioned that although the districts have filed paperwork, they have not been evaluated and approved for funding by the State Allocation Board under the rules in effect for Proposition 51. Some may have been built with local funding and are waiting for a state match.
With $40 billion in local projects on the ballot and probably a net of $4 billion available for modernization and new construction, there likely will not be enough to fund more than a portion, leading to the establishment of a new list of unfunded projects.
How does the match work?
The state awards matching money to districts to defray the qualifying cost of individual school projects; it does not provide a lump sum award for all of the districts’ requests. The state pays a uniform amount per student based on a school’s enrollment. Districts with growing enrollment, buildings over 75 years old, and a shortage of space can receive funding for new construction.
As with past state bonds, the state will split the cost of new construction; the state will contribute a higher match for modernization projects — 60% by the state and 40% by the district.
A new feature in Proposition 2 will provide a slightly larger state match — up to an additional 5 percentage points on a sliding scale system to districts with both high rates of low-income students, foster children and English learners, and, to a lesser extent, with a small bonding capacity per student, another measure of ability to issue construction bonds. Low-income districts like Fresno Unified and Los Angeles Unified will be eligible for 65% state assistance for renovations and 55% for new construction, lowering their share to 35% and 45%, respectively.
Is the formula fair?
Analyses by the Public Policy Institute of California and the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley have concluded that the current system favors property-wealthy districts. Property-poor districts serving low-income families can’t afford bonds to qualify for state modernization subsidies to repair and upgrade schools.
The center’s data showed that the quintile of districts with the lowest assessed property value — those with a median of $798,000 of assessed value per student — received $2,970 per student in state modernization funding from 2000 to 2023, while the districts in the highest quintile, where the median assessed property value was $2.3 million per student, received $7,910 per student — more than two-and-a-half times as much.
Another factor is that matching money is distributed first-come, first-served, which favors large districts and small property-wealthy districts with an in-house staff of architects and project managers adept at navigating complex funding requirements.
Does Proposition 2 address these complaints?
To an extent, yes.
Proposition 2 would dedicate 10% of new funding for modernization and new construction to small districts, defined as those with fewer than 2,501 students. First-come, first-served wouldn’t apply to them.
Proposition 2 would expand financial hardship assistance in which the state pays for the total cost of projects in districts whose tax bases are too low to issue a bond. Eligibility would triple the threshold for hardship aid from a maximum of $5 million to $15 million in total assessed value; additional dozens of mostly rural districts would become eligible. Some have never issued a bond to fix schools that urgently need attention. Since 1998, about 3% of state bond money has been spent on hardship aid.
The higher state match for districts with large proportions of low-income students and English learners is a step toward addressing inequalities. However, critics led by the public interest law firm Public Advocates charge that it does not go far enough and uses flawed measures. Districts like 3,500-student Del Norte in the far north of the state and 46,000-student San Bernardino Unified in Southern California would need an 80% to 90% state match to raise enough money to fix critical conditions and add facilities that property-wealthy districts take for granted, they argue.
What else is new in Proposition 2?
The bond will allow districts to seek a supplemental grant to construct or renovate transitional kindergarten classrooms and build gyms, all-purpose rooms, or kitchens in schools that lack them.
Districts must write an overall plan documenting the age and uses of all facilities when submitting a proposal for Prop. 2 funding. The lack of data has made it difficult to determine building needs statewide.
What would happen if Proposition 2 is defeated?
In the last 30 years, voters have nixed state construction bonds twice, but never twice in a row. If voters do that next month, the unmet building needs of districts struggling to address them will mount. The price to fix them will rise, forcing difficult choices on how to scale back and reorder priorities.
The $9 billion bond issue passed in 2016 would cost $11.8 billion to cover the same work in 2024, 31% more, according to a U.S. inflation calculator. A $10 billion bond passed in 2002 would require $17.5 billon in funding today.
The escalation in materials and labor costs since the pandemic may continue to soar — or maybe not. Voters on Prop. 2 will have to decide whether to take that gamble.
“We believe that voters will understand the value of making the critical repairs and classroom upgrades that our students need and deserve,“ said Rebekah Kalleen, legislative advocate for the Coalition for Adequate School Housing or CASH, the lobby representing school districts and school construction contractors campaigning for Prop. 2.
El Camino Fundamental High School principal Evelyn Welborn explains how rainwater leaks through hallway windows, causing teachers to use trash cans to collect the water.
Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
Renovating a high school that swelters in summer and gushes leaks in winter is a priority of a large Sacramento-areadistrict. Replacing an undersized gym with no air conditioning is a priority of a small high school district in Kern County.
The to-do list varies among the hundreds of school districts that have placed construction bonds before voters on Nov. 5, but urgency is what they share in common. In California, the list of school buildings needing attention is long and growing, compounded by climate change that is exposing more of the state to unprecedented levels of heat and unhealthy air.
In 2020, anxiety about an unknown virus, Covid-19, led voters to defeat half of the local bonds on the ballot that year and discouraged many districts from placing bonds before voters in 2022. The suppressed demand has resulted in a record 252 school districtsseeking $40 billion worth of renovation and new construction projects, including classrooms for the youngest students, transitional kindergartners, and space for “maker labs” and innovative career explorations for high schoolers.
Many of the districts are hoping to seek financial help from Proposition 2, a $10 billion state construction bond for TK-12 and community colleges, that the Legislature also has put on the Nov. 5 statewide ballot. Passage would begin to replenish state assistance, which has run dry from the $9 billion bond passed in 2016, and create a new list of projects eligible for state help in the future.
This report is the first day of a two-day look at a sampling of districts from different parts of the state that are asking their voters to pass local bonds. First, we visitSan Juan Unified and Wasco Union High School District. Tuesday, read about Modesto City Schools, Fresno Unified and neighboring Central Unified.
San Juan Unified School District
San Juan Unified
Sacramento County
49,840 students
61% low-income, foster and English learner students
$22,243 bonding capacity per student*
* Bonding capacity is the maximum amount of general obligation bonds a school district can issue at a given time. A district can never go over the ceiling. For unified districts, it is 2.5% of total assessed valuation; the median in California is $25,569 per student.
El Camino Fundamental High School in Sacramento was quiet Thursday as temperatures rose to 103 degrees. Few of the school’s 1,300 students lingered in the halls, where there is no air conditioning and open windows provide the only air circulation.
Even air conditioning in classrooms is not always reliable. Teachers and their students have had to double up with other classes at times when some systems fail.
The upcoming rainy season won’t offer much relief at the 70-year-old school. Water from leaks travels down walls and into lockers in the halls and drenches expensive machinery in the metal shop.
In one particularly bad spot, teachers have taken to tying a garbage can to one window with a rope, to collect the water before it floods the hallway floor.
School staff must regularly snake out a sewer access that has spewed sewage across walkways students must traverse to enter a classroom.
El Camino Fundamental High School band classroom storage room.Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
El Camino Fundamental High School’s band classroom has limited storage for instruments.Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
A drinking fountain at El Camino Fundamental High School was shut off due to water leakage.Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
The quad at El Camino Fundamental High School. Many buildings have windows that do not open and areas where the concrete is decaying.Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
Windows throughout El Camino Fundamental High School are either cracked or do not open correctly.Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
An out-of-order bathroom at El Camino Fundamental High School.Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
Renovating the school is one of the priorities of San Juan Unified School District if voters pass Measure P, a $950 million general obligation bond. The measure will update classrooms, repair leaky roofs, improve school security, provide safe drinking water, and remove asbestos and lead paint from the district’s aging schools.
The bond will cost homeowners $60 per $100,000 of their home’s value — $300 a year for a house worth $500,000.
The improvements will improve education and retain teachers, said Superintendent Melissa Bassanelli in a message on the district website.
“Quality classrooms and good teachers are essential to student learning,” Bassanelli wrote. “If passed by voters, Measure P funds will help the district upgrade career technical education classrooms, math and science labs and ensure that students have access to a well-rounded education including music, visual and performing arts.”
During a tour of El Camino Fundamental, principal Evelyn Welborn pointed out a crowded biology classroom where 36 students sat elbow to elbow with little space or updated equipment for lab work.
“We have fantastic programs going on,” Welborn said. “Unfortunately, our building was built in the 1950s, so we’re doing, trying to do 21st century learning in a 20th century building, which doesn’t always work.”
If the bond passes, El Camino Fundamental could have some buildings renovated and others razed and replaced, potentially with a two-story building, said Frank Camarda, chief operations officer for the district. The buildings that are renovated would be gutted and have new windows, ceilings, lighting, flooring, plumbing and electrical, he said.
The San Juan district needs $3.5 billion to complete all the work needed at its 64 schools, Camarda said, adding that district leaders expect to get $90 million in facilities funds from the state’s Proposition 2, a public education facilities bond, if it passes on Nov. 5.
If Measure P does not pass, the district — in a worst-case scenario — would have to focus on repairing and maintaining roofs, heating and air conditioning units, and electrical systems at its schools, Camarda said.
The district passed a $750 million bond measure eight years ago and used the funds to update schools like Dyer-Kelly Elementary School, located just three miles from the high school. The old elementary school was razed and replaced with a two-story school five years ago.
Dyer-Kelly Elementary teacher Hallie Lozano engages with a kindergarten student during outdoor playtime. Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
Dyer-Kelly Elementary teacher Hallie Lozano remembers the leaky roofs, failing air conditioner, lack of storage and limited number of bathrooms in the 70-year-old school before it was torn down and replaced.
“That was a big deal, Lozano said. “It was really hard (for teachers) to just get into the bathroom before your next period.”
Now teachers and students at the K-5 school have access to numerous bathrooms, assemble in a modern amphitheater and take part in drama productions on a stage in the cafeteria.
Spacious classrooms now have whiteboards, television sets, bulletin boards and ample storage.
The school, with about 97% of its 800 students from low-income families and 60% English learners, has become the centerpiece of the community.
Principal Jamal Hicks says about 150 people show up outside the school each evening to visit and watch their children play on the school lawn and sidewalks. He says the school provides safe, well-lit space that isn’t readily available elsewhere in the community.
“The school is like a beacon for the entire community,” Hicks said.
Updating school facilities at San Juan Unified, a district of 40,000 students, has to be a comprehensive step-by-step long-term process, Camarda said.
“You can’t do it all at once,” he said. “You have to keep everything functioning, but you also have to start making some bold moves and replacing the oldest of your inventory. … So we’ve changed our philosophy, and it seems to be working really well.”
Wasco Union High School District
When it rains or gets hot in Wasco — and it’s often scorching — Wasco Union High School often has to resort to a backup plan for P.E. classes because of the state of its current gym.
WAsco Union High School District
Kern County
1,807 students
89% low-income, foster and English learner students
$31,672 bonding capacity per student*
* Bonding capacity per student is the maximum amount of general obligation bonds a school district can issue at a given time. A district can never go over the ceiling. For high school districts it is 1.25% of total assessed valuation; the median in California is $25,569.
“Anytime we cannot be outside, (the students) have to sit in the bleachers and do online assignments,” said Millie Alvarado, P.E. department head.
A new gym with air conditioning is a key project that Wasco Union High School District is promoting as a part of Measure D, a $35.4 million education bond measure on the ballot in this rural Kern County community this November. The bond will cost homeowners $30 per $100,000 of their home’s value – $94 a year for a house worth $314,000, the median value in Wasco, according to Zillow.
A warm, sunny climate has made Wasco a national leader in rose production, but temperatures that soar above 90 degrees for a third of the year also make it unsafe for students to do anything physically rigorous outside.
That wouldn’t be such a problem if Wasco Union High School had an air-conditioned gymnasium, like most high schools in Kern County.
Wasco’s lone comprehensive high school gym just has swamp coolers, with an evaporative cooling system that is no match for the triple digit heat that hits the region with increasing regularity.
The shower in the boys locker room at Wasco Union High. Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
The girls locker room at Wasco Union High. The showers are leaky and old, so they have been coverted into changing stalls.Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
The boys locker room bathroom lacks urinals and instead has a trough along the wall.Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
School administrators said the gymnasium is badly in need of new lockers and proper ventilation.Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
The shop for Wasco Union High’s construction course is cramped and has no air conditioning. Using power tools makes the heat worse.Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
Classrooms for career technical education are cramped, and the Wasco Union High School District hopes to expand them with Proposition 2.Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
The west side of campus is completely open. There is no fence, which the superintendent said is a security problem.Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
“We’re trying to really help the community to understand the safety component of it,” said Superintendent Kevin Tallon. “It’s just not a safe campus when you look at the safety standards that other facilities have in most Kern County schools.”
This year, paramedics were called when a student passed out due to heat during P.E., Tallon added. Athletes who rely on the gym for games, after-school practice or summer conditioning feel the effects acutely.
“You feel like you’re suffocating,” said Rosalia Sanchez, a senior and varsity volleyball player.
Principal Rusvel Prado said the roof has been patched over many times but still leaks when it rains.
Even when the weather cooperates, the gym does a poor job accommodating the nearly 1,700 students who attend Wasco Union High. For school pep rallies, about half of the student body overflows outdoors. Locker rooms are cramped and unventilated, which Alvarado says is not ideal when 200 to 300 students are changing into and out of gym clothes each class period.
Measure D was developed with community feedback, Tallon said. The district was able to pass a bond measure in 2008 that modernized and upgraded heating and air conditioning systems for much of the campus, which was built in 1915. But two follow-up bond measures failed — one by a fraction of a percentage point in 2018, and one by 3.3 points in March 2020.
In the 2008 bond, classrooms took priority over the gymnasium, which dates back to the 1950s. Tallon said that if the new bond proposal passes, it would allow for 80% of the campus to be modernized over the next 20 years.
Campus security has become a bigger priority for schools in recent years. The bond measure will also go toward upgrading door locks, alarms, cameras, lighting and emergency communication systems. The west section of campus, where career technical and dual enrollment courses are held, is unfenced — a major safety concern in an era of mass shootings, Tallon said.
Pathways to college and career have received a renewed focus in California, bringing new facility needs. Wasco Union High’s construction program has a cramped shop without air conditioning. The building that will ultimately house dual enrollment students was set on fire by an arsonist who attacked local schools, according to local news reports. The district owns an off-campus farm that trains agricultural students, but there is no plumbing or safe drinking water — something the bond money aims to address.
The measure is asking for nearly the full amount of the $36 million bonding capacity of the community. Wasco Union High School District plans to apply for Proposition 2 funds, if it passes. The proposition will prioritize districts like Wasco, where its residents’ incomes are low — 88% of students qualify as socioeconomically disadvantaged. However, Tallon doesn’t believe that proposition or other state funding sources will be sufficient to help the district.
“We’re sensitive to the fact that it’s a tough economic time right now when it comes to inflation,” Tallon said. “But we also try to provide as much information as we can about the cost of the bond measure to the homeowner. For what you get in return for the quality of schools, we feel it’s money well spent.”
