The stakes for builders are high; failure to pass the measure could result in a doubling of local fees placed on developers building new homes in order to help pay for school improvements.

The lead role in securing the 365,880 signatures to qualify the bond initiative was led by a politically-savvy trio – Californians for Quality Schools, Coalition for Adequate School Housing and the California Building Industry Association.

The latter two support the quality schools group, and are led by boards composed of developers, school officials, architects and financial advisors.

“This bond will go a long way to ensure school districts have the necessary resources to create the best learning environments for students,” said Eileen Reynolds, who chairs the board of the California Building Industry Association and works as government affairs director for Tejon Ranch Corp., one of the largest private land holders in the state.

The group has history on its side; California voters last year passed 128 of 157 local school bond measures, or 82 percent, approving $14 billion in spending.

Voters statewide last passed a bond measure for schools in 2006 – worth $20 billion – with 57 percent of the vote. The money from that bond is now gone, with $2 billion of improvements queued up in need of funding.

Local vs. Statewide Bonds

Proponents of the spending face opposition from Gov. Jerry Brown, who set the table for the bond imitative when he permitted little outlay in his budget this year for school improvements.

Brown said he felt that local bond elections better served the people.

“I think the locals can do it more efficiently,” Brown said earlier this year.

In many of the districts that passed bond measures last year, enrollment has dropped but voters continue to fund local measures.

Voters in the Alameda Unified School District last year approved $179 million in bonds with 62 percent of the vote. Enrollment is 9,502, which is 4 percent lower than seven years ago.

Voters in Anaheim Union High School District last year signed off on $249 million in bonds for, among other things, “construction, reconstruction, rehabilitation or replacement of school facilities.” Enrollment there has dropped 4 percent since 2010.

Teacher and administrator levels have remained steady since 2010, according to figures from the state’s department of education.

Brown’s formidable political heft already has halted one effort, a $4.3 billion school bond that passed the statehouse last session but stopped at his desk. It was this move that prompted the new measure, which proponents spent $2 million getting on the ballot.

Motivation for Developers

Those proponents stand to benefit if that $9 billion in school spending is passed.

Bonds rely on property taxes on homes in an affected area, which makes it easier for developers to get the go-ahead to build.

One of the most important elements in a selling disclosure for schools is the amount of taxable property in the district.

But those developers are also in a continual battle with municipalities that are charging some of the highest developer fees in the U.S. that have led to the highest housing costs in the nation.

It puts developers in a dicey public position – yes, there is some self-serving interest but at the same time, there is a legitimate need for statewide outlay on schools and a need to be an integral part of the discussion on how to fund that outlay.

“Obviously modern schools are an important marketing item when selling homes and people want homes in good school districts and that includes the facilities,” said Dave Cogdill, a former Republican lawmaker who leads the California Building Industry Association.

He also points out that developers, large and small, are hit up for money continually, from errant legislation that would require more and more “green” fees to affordable housing mandates.

“We are expected to deal with global warming and the cost of housing in general to provide affordable housing and to pay for all new school construction,” Cogdill said. “No wonder an average home costs $440,000 in California and we have the worst affordability in the nation.”

Political Contributions

Several PACs operated by the association in the past have donated to efforts to increase voter turnout in Los Angeles County, the campaign of Secretary of State Alex Padilla and several other candidates from both parties.

Contributors to the PAC include numerous construction firms, engineering companies and home developers.

“Yes, the building lobby benefits greatly in this,” said Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which advocates for limited public taxation. “It spends a considerable amount to support these school bond measures and the people opposed have no money.”

The unspoken message that underlies any school bond pitch is that it’s for the kids, he said.

“But a lot of people want good schools and that’s a good thing,” Vosburgh said. “But they don’t see that in the end, these people are expecting a boost to their wallets.”

By Chris Reed

If we are going to have a debate about school finances in California because of the Legislature’s interest in making it easier for school districts to get parcel taxes approved to boost their budgets, let’s have a serious debate. A serious debate would focus on three related school finance scandals.

1) The unconstitutional practice of school districts asking parents to pay for basic educational resources.

2) The insane but apparently legal practice of school districts using 30-year borrowing to pay for shortlived electronics like laptops and for the most routine maintenance, including graffiti removal.

3) The ridiculous practice of school districts using capital appreciation bonds — which districts often don’t start paying back for decades and which can’t be refinanced. The result is bonds that can cost 10 times or more the original sum being borrowed.

How are they interrelated? Because they are all driven by standard teacher compensation practices in which most teachers get automatic raises for 15 of their first 20 years on the job and get additional raises just for taking graduate courses of any kind — not even in their teaching field.

This has led to employee compensation consuming 90 percent or more of the budget in many school districts — and to desperate attempts to find money to cover teacher pay such as 1, 2 and 3.

Isn’t this, yunno, news — this phenomenon? Not to the Sacramento media, which has covered the third scandal but never placed it in the larger context of why school finances are so stressed.

The key to understanding Sacramento is that goal no. 1 of the CTA and the CFT is preserving and funding those automatic raises, and the unions are the most powerful force in Sacramento. It would be nice if George Skelton ever mentioned this, don’t you think? But don’t hold your breath.

By JOHN SEILER

The research by Adam Schaeffer of the Cato Institute’s Center for Education Freedom seemed shocking: The Los Angeles Unified School District spent $29,780 per student in fiscal year 2007-08. That’s way above the $10,000 as advertised by the school district, and as used in most studies.

The $29,780 per student figure means a class of 25 students would spend $744,500 a year.

I talked to Schaeffer and had him send me his research, which I’ll append to this article. He also pointed to a more comprehensive study he conducted in March, “They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools,” which tracked and compared school-district spending around the country. It includes data on LAUSD that was updated in his more recent research. The earlier study found a wide divergence in total spending in California school districts, such as only $11,215 for Linwood Unified and $20,751 for Beverly Hills Unified.

I also talked to the LAUSD and to Lance Izumi,  Koret Senior Fellow in Education Studies at the Pacific Research Institute, CalWatchDog.com’s parent institute.

Basically, what Schaeffer found was that the LAUSD doesn’t count capital spending, such as from local and state bond measures passed by voters. For example, $1.18 billion was spent in 2007-08 from Measure R, which 64 percent of voters passed in March 2004. And the district spent $668 million from state Proposition 55, also on the March 2004 ballot. According to Ballotopedia, it barely passed with 50.9 percent of the votes. Both were bonds.

Those and similar measures were passed during the boom times of the California economy. It’s a good question whether voters would pass them during the current deep recession. It’s also curious that these bonds, and similar ones, were passed at a time when state and LAUSD student enrollment has been declining.

Why isn’t this money accounted for in the usual per-pupil tallies? “They act as if its ‘bond revenue. Oh, it’s not tax money’,” Schaeffer told me. “What the districts do is like credit card debt. It’s revolving. When you bring it up, they always move the topic of the conversation to, ‘we froze salaries and cut positions’.”

LAUSD responds

I called up LAUSD, talked to Spokesperson Lydia Ramos, and sent her links to Schaeffer’s research. A week later I called her for her perspective. “Essentially it’s going to be difficult to comment,” she replied. “Most school districts don’t count capital funding” in budget reports. “We obviously are doing our best to pass every dollar down to the classroom.”

I pointed out that, when I buy something at Walmart, the price includes the costs of capital spending for buildings. “That’s not how we view our work,” she replied. And she said of the money sent for capital construction from Sacramento, “That’s really a state decision. When no one else does it” – includes capital spending in per-pupil spending numbers. “Why are we perceived as under-reporting when no one uses this methodology?”

I brought up Schaeffer’s number of $29,780 per student and asked if that was correct. “You’re using a methodology that only you are using,” Ramos replied. “No, that’s not accurate. That’s not what we’re doing. I’m going to have to let you go. This is an issue to take up with the state, or your local district, to see what they are doing.” [This is the first time in my 35 years of journalism that an official spokesperson has hung up on me.]

Because LAUSD gets both state and federal tax dollars, its spending is of interest to those outside the district’s boundaries.

Legitimate costs

“Those are legitimate costs to include,” Izumi told me of the capital costs. “They can say they don’t count it. But the specification for those costs always is that they will help kids.”

For example, as Ballotopedia recorded, Prop. 55’s ballot question asked state voters, “Should the state sell twelve billion three hundred million dollars ($12,300,000,000) in general obligation bonds for construction and renovation of K-12 school facilities and higher education facilities?” The bond had almost no opposition. Major funding behind the measure came from the California Teachers Association and the California Building Industry Association.

The cost of Prop. 55 is about $823 million per year, a significant contributor to the state’s current $19 billion budget deficit. LAUSD’s 694,288 students in 2007-08 were about 11 percent of the state’s approximately 6.3 million public-school students.

As to the LAUSD’s insistence on excluding capital costs, Izumi asked, “Would these kids learn the same if they were sitting in the park some place? To not include those costs is only to give half the story about what’s being spent in those schools. If the district had a disagreement with what the Cato Institute put out, then they should engage in argument about it. If the district isn’t willing to engage, then you have to wonder how strong a case they have.

“They didn’t say they disagreed with it. They just said they didn’t include the figures the Cato Institute used. That gives credence to Cato’s methodology. Public schools often aren’t willing to engage in debate.”

For its $29,780 spent per student, LAUSD’s graduation rate is 40.6 percent, second worst in the country.

John Seiler, an editorial writer with The Orange County Register for 20 years, is a reporter and analyst for CalWatchDog.com. His email: writejohnseiler@gmail.com.

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Appendix: Los Angeles Unified School District Budget Data, Fiscal 2007-08: