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.”
A poster at Oakland High School encourages 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in the school board election. These posters are displayed throughout the campus.
Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
While the upcoming presidential election crowds voters’ minds, a new demographic will be casting their ballots for the first time this November. Both the cities of Berkeley and Oakland announced in August that 16 and 17-year-old constituents are now eligible to vote in local school board races.
Berkeley voters approved Measure Y in 2016 by just over 70% of the vote. In Oakland, Measure QQ — which indicates similar youth voting stipulations as its Berkeley counterpart — was approved in 2020 with 68% of the vote.
Years after the approval, continued community advocacy from organizations like Oakland Kids First has helped push the Alameda County Registrar of Voters to finalize a system to register 16- and 17-year-old voters.
At a school board candidate forum on Oct. 22 hosted by Fremont High School and organized by Oakland Youth Vote, students, teachers, administrators, organizers and school board candidates from Oakland Unified School District gathered to register voters and learn more about the candidates running in local school board contests.
Nearly all the school board candidates from districts 1, 3, 5 and 7 were present, and each was given a chance to introduce themselves and discuss their priorities and platforms within a time-limited format moderated by students from Fremont High School.
After the student moderators and administrators gave introductions and explanations on registration, voting and the school board, the moderators emphasized the importance of voting in making student voices heard. They cited the efforts of community organizations like the Oakland Youth Commission and Californians for Justice in their success.
Organizers and candidates spoke to students at the Oakland Youth Voting Forum on Oct. 22.Credit: Emily Hamill / EdSource
“Your vote has the power to bring us closer to your vision and make your dream a reality,” said a student moderator. “This makes history, but it was only possible because we have been fighting for the last five years. We have earned this — it is a right.”
Forum presenters highlighted what they considered the most important issues to Oakland students — access to health and wellness, community-centered schools, and essential life skills — all of which outlined concerns from over 1,400 student survey forms gathered from across the district.
The remainder of the forum consisted of the student moderators asking the candidates questions about how they plan to represent student concerns for equitable resource distribution, holistic mental health and wellness checks, school safety and budget deficits.
Oakland Tech senior Ariana Astorga Vega and sophomore Amina Tongun, both members of the All City Council, or the ACC, attended the forum and emphasized the importance of students using their newfound voting rights, which are limited to the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD board races. The ACC is made up of 11 peer-elected high school students to represent student concerns to OUSD.
“Even though I can’t vote yet because I have not turned 16, I’m here as a part of the ACC to support the local youth vote,” Tongun said. “I feel like it’s really special because we get to vote as young people and our voices are being heard. That’s one of the main reasons that I joined the ACC, because I really believe in advocating for young people and helping their voices be heard.”
Vega echoed Tongun’s opinion about the new voting rights, and her appreciation for being able to be “a part of that change.”
The two have also been involved in the ACC’s efforts to encourage youth voting, including streamlining social media posts about it and putting up fliers reading “Breaking News: 16-17 year-olds can now vote!” across district’s schools.
Although they have run into obstacles, like student disinterest due to not knowing how to vote and what the implications are, Vega and Tongun hope their community’s continued efforts to raise awareness and education will motivate their peers to take action.
Maya Rapier, an organizer with Oakland Kids First, who also attended the forum, has been committed to the purpose. By helping distribute voter registration forms, spread awareness about the forum, and even implement a new voting curriculum into OUSD schools, Rapier said the organization has helped the district register over 1,000 student voters.
“I genuinely feel like Oakland is such a beautiful place with such a beautiful community of voters who deserve so much, but there’s a history here of students being underserved and under-resourced,” Rapier said. “Students know their own experiences best, so for them to be able to be in the schools real-time, notice an issue, take that to the representative, and know that they have the power to bring attention to it, means a lot.”
Rapier added, “I’m a former student of OUSD, and I’m really inspired by the students here and the work that they’ve been doing.”
Fremont High School Principal Nidya Baez echoed these sentiments, expressing that her student body “feels responsible” for representing families and community members who cannot vote. She has worked to help “eliminate (obstacles like) the fear factor” by partnering with local coalitions to organize class presentations, lunchtime tabling and events like the candidate forum.
At Berkeley High School (BHS), students, with faculty help, have spearheaded youth voter registration and education. On Oct. 8, students from the BHS Civic Leaders Club organized a school board candidate forum with assistance from John Villavicencio, the director of student activities. The students invited the candidates to speak at the high school and allowed time for students to ask questions.
Villavicencio added that other BHS student organizations have led efforts in encouraging students to register to vote and done the groundwork by taking mail-in voter registration forms to classrooms. He also noted efforts from Josh Daniels, a former member of both the Oakland and Berkeley unified school district boards, who organized a weekly Zoom call between student leaders, student organizations and nonprofits in support of the youth vote to discuss efforts in their respective school districts.
During one weekly meeting, Oakland Youth Vote shared a curriculum members had put together detailing what the school board does, introducing the OUSD school board, emphasizing the importance of youth voting and assisting in registering students to vote.
After hearing about the curriculum Oakland Youth Vote created, Villavicencio encouraged Berkeley to create something similar. BHS teacher librarian Allyson Bogie offered to help, and created a shortened two-day curriculum tailored to Berkeley Unified. After review from the superintendent’s office, student leaders, teachers and administrators, the curriculum was shared with teachers who could use it in their classrooms.
“I wanted to make sure any teachers who wanted a tool to talk about youth voting, and getting kids registered, and the history of it, had something really easy to use,” Bogie said. “I believe it’s important for kids to vote, and I want to support the teachers, and that’s part of my role as a librarian.”
According to Villavicencio, there have been several hurdles to overcome in convincing students to register, and to understand why this opportunity is special. Some students did not know their own Social Security numbers, complicating the registration process, while others have never heard of the school board or don’t know what the school board does, making it difficult to teach students about the impact of their vote.
Villavicencio said they could “easily reach 1,000 pre-registration” out of about 1,800 potential BHS students who could register to vote. As of Oct. 22, 491 students were registered, leaving him “slightly disappointed,” he said.
“(Some students) are very passionate about activism and also engaging in the community,” Villavicencio said, but the overall sentiment is “lukewarm.” Bogie noted that she doesn’t think students view it negatively but has noticed a lot of students who also “aren’t that interested.”
Looking forward, Bogie hopes to see “continuing student momentum” for future elections.
“It’s commendable, what’s being done,” Villavicencio said. “And it’s crazy to say that there could be a lot more done.”
Emily Hamill is a third-year student at UC Berkeley double-majoring in comparative literature and media studies and minoring in journalism. Kelcie Lee is a second-year student at UC Berkeley majoring in history and sociology. Both are members of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.
California Student Journalism Corps member Jo Moon, a junior at UC Berkeley studying political economy, gender and women’s studies and Korean, contributed to this story.
