School 94501/94502

As more and more Alamedans are now coming to understand, California’s school finance system is broken. But based on the complaints of Measure H opponents, I am concerned that not as many Alamedans also understand that many of us already have been working hard for years to fix that broken system and will continue to do so (probably also for years), regardless of what happens with the Measure H vote on June 3.

The point of Measure H, of course, is not to solve permanently our school funding problems. The point is to offset this year’s precipitous and unprecedented proposed cuts in state funding of education and to continue to protect Alameda’s great public schools temporarily while we fight the long battle to fix the system in Sacramento. We can and must both play “defense” locally with the parcel tax as well as continue to play “offense” in Sacramento. If we vote down Measure H and gamble everything on a reckless Sacramento-only strategy, we risk destroying public education as we know it in Alameda. It really is too valuable to throw away.

Anyone who seriously opposes a four-year school parcel tax on the grounds that we should gamble on a Sacramento-only strategy has no real understanding of how, in the real world, systemic changes in policy at the state level might happen: If one looks at the past few decades of California school finance policy, the best analogy may be the movement of tectonic plates: Change comes slowly in tiny increments (e.g., a few equalization dollars here or there), though every once in awhile there is an earthquake (e.g., Serrano v. Priest, Proposition 13, Proposition 98, the recession of 2008). I do think the time is right for a earthquake of positive reform of this broken system in the coming years, but there are too far many variables in play for anyone to be able to predict with confidence whether that will happen in two, four or eight years. For those of us who have spent hundreds of volunteer hours on the ongoing effort to fix the state system in recent years, the “don’t ask for a $10/month parcel tax because the state should fix the system” argument is ridiculously naïve and personally offensive.

At the end of the day, as unpleasant as paying any tax is, given the huge downside risk of 4.5 million dollars in devastating cuts to AUSD, Measure H is a prudent, relatively modest hedge against that risk with the big upside that good public schools bring for kids, homeowners and the whole community.

For what its worth for anyone interested, what follows is my attempt to summarize and explain (some of) the many state-level school finance problems that plague AUSD (and others). With apologies to lovers of metaphorical consistency, I’ll be switching my analogy from tectonic plates to pie.

For AUSD, the major state level finance problems might be categorized broadly as those related to (1) the size of the California’s overall education funding pie, (2) the many rigid rules the state imposes on how and when we eat the slice of that pie the state gives us, and (3) the unfairly small slice of that pie the state gives AUSD.

This winter and spring, most of the major media coverage of the education budget battle in California has been about problem (1): the overall size of the “education pie” (e.g., “Don’t shrink the pie below its Prop 98 constitutionally mandated size!”). Also in this category would be any longer term efforts to reform Proposition 13, to fix the state tax system generally and/or possibly to reform state redevelopment law.

There is also growing interest around the state in reform of the slightly wonkier but also important problem area (2): rigid limits the state puts on how and when we eat our pie.  In particular, there is growing support for giving some of the state’s spending authority/regulatory powers back to local school districts where it was until the 1970’s (”devolution”). This would involve combining much of the “categorical funding” the state provides to school districts (currently about 33% of total state spending on education in California) into broader categories (or even no categories) so that school districts would have more control over how they spend their own revenues in accordance with their local needs. Reform of the ridiculous budget calendar (i.e., every year school districts must begin approving budget cuts in March and have a final budget in June even before the state has passed a final budget) would fit here as well. The requirement that school districts set a budget before they know what their revenues/income will be from the state is indefensibly bad public policy and yet it endures.

For most Alamedans who try to understand California’s broken school finance system, perhaps the most frustrating issue of all is problem (3): AUSD’s unfairly small piece of pie. As I hope most know by now, California does not fund every school district equally or equitably. Due to funding limits (called “revenue limits” first set in the early 1970’s), AUSD receives less money per student than most other school districts. The loss of federal aid due to the closure of the Naval Air Station in the 1990’s made this a big problem for AUSD. In fact, we now have the lowest Base Revenue Limit (”BRL”) of all 17 districts in Alameda County. (The overwhelming majority of our non-categorical school funding comes from our BRL.) Moreover, our BRL is below the state average, even though (a) the cost of living/doing business in this county is well above the statewide average and is among the very highest in the entire state and (b) the percentage of English language learners in AUSD schools is higher than average.

Through legislative lobbying, litigation or a combination of the two, we have to get our fair share of the state pie. This is the main front on which many of us have been working and will continue to work for as long as it takes. As you may know, among other things, Ann Casper and I have been working hard for more than a year on the litigation component of this effort. Although we do not have any major breakthroughs that we can report, we have continued to work and make steady progress and have good “live” leads. Launching multi-million dollar litigation is complicated and time-consuming.

Whether through legislation and/or litigation, we might get a bigger, fairer slice of pie by either (a) a relatively narrow approach (e.g., seeking greater equalization funds just for AUSD and a few other districts, perhaps on the grounds that we’ve been negatively impacted by the NAS closure) or (b) relatively broad grounds (e.g., seeking to reform the whole system and in the process benefit many other districts around the state). There are advantages to each approach. For example, (a) might be preferable because it would require taking less of the whole pie from others while (b) would be much more likely to include a broad coalition supporting our efforts politically and financially. To date, we have been working on both (a) and (b).

Ultimately, to get the earthquake of reform we need in order to get the slice of pie we deserve, the question of what specific remedy we should seek must be a critical piece of our legal and political strategy. Even if we were to launch and then prevail in litigation, the legislature would still have to implement whatever remedy the courts would impose, as was the case in Serrano and as has been the case in other states where there has been successful litigation in this area. Accordingly, it is important to keep in mind that any judicial remedy we would pursue would have to be enacted by the legislature.

My own view is that the ultimate remedy would likely be some sort of “weighted student funding formula” that would target monies based on student needs, not categorical programs or historical accident (i.e., what the district’s revenue limit has been). This approach was favored by the “Getting Down to Facts” studies (aka “the Stanford studies”) published last year and is politically viable in the medium to long term. Virtually any “weighted student formula”-style reform would benefit AUSD. If such a plan were to be enacted directly by the legislature in the coming few years, we could attain right then the best outcome/remedy we could ever hope to achieve from any lawsuit 8-10-12 years from now.

It is far from certain that this earthquake will happen soon, but this past week, there was a big step to move such a school finance reform forward with the official launch in Sacramento of a plan by three of the most respected “education thinkers” in California: Alan Bersin, Mike Kirst, and Goodwin Liu. I am a big fan of their plan and will write more about it in the coming weeks. For any interested, here’s the 16-page plan: Getting Beyond the Facts: Reforming California School Finance. (Depending on how much background knowledge one brings to this policy area, reading the 16 page report will take somewhere in the range of 20-60 minutes.)

There is plenty to be hopeful about on the state level in the long run and so we must continue to push as hard as we can to make the earthquake we need there come to pass sooner rather than later. But no one knows when that will finally happen. In the meantime, we have to pass Measure H.