Small and low-income school officials say the bond measure deal is unfair. The money is allocated through matching grants, so wealthier districts that can raise more local funds will get more money from the state

by Carolyn Jones July 2, 2024

CalMatters

As lawmakers finalize a school facilities bond for the November ballot, some superintendents from low-income and small districts say the proposal leaves them with an all-too-familiar feeling: underfunded and overlooked.

“Am I mad? Yeah, I am very mad,” said Gudiel Crosthwaite, superintendent of Lynwood Unified, in a low-income area in Los Angeles County. “California has a responsibility to educate its children, regardless of where they live. This bond favors larger, higher-wealth districts at the expense of districts like ours.”

Lawmakers struck a deal late Saturday night on Assembly Bill 247, a $10 billion bond that would pay for repairs and upgrades at K-12 schools and community colleges throughout the state. Schools desperately need the money: The current fund for school repairs is nearly empty and the voters rejected the state’s last school facilities bond, in 2020.

Everyone agrees on the need for money to fix dry rot and build new science labs. But some superintendents, as well as the civil rights law firm Public Advocates, had been pushing for a more equitable way to distribute the money. Currently, the state doles out facilities funding through 50-50 matching grants, which means that districts that can raise a lot of money locally — typically, higher-income areas — can get more state money.

Public Advocates has threatened to sue California if it doesn’t adopt a wider sliding scale for distributing the money. The current deal does include a sliding scale, but it’s only from 60 percent to 65 percent, not the 5 percent to 90 percent that Public Advocates wanted. Under the deal’s scale, the state’s wealthiest districts would only get slightly less than its poorest.

Also under the current proposal, schools could get more money if they hire union contractors for their construction projects. That gives an edge to urban areas where union labor is easier to find.

Brooke Patton, spokeswoman for the State Building and Trades Council of California, said hiring union workers would benefit any school project because the workers are highly trained and efficient. Union projects also include apprentices, who may be from the local community.

“Not only does California end up with new school facilities, but also a new generation of workers who can afford to live in California and contribute to our economy for years to come — a worthy investment of public funds,” Patton said.

The bill still needs to pass both houses with a two-thirds majority and be signed by the governor this week. To go into effect, it needs approval from a simple majority of voters in the fall.

‘It’s a compromise’

While the bill doesn’t satisfy every need for California’s schools, it’s better than nothing, some education advocates said this week.

“It’s not perfect; it’s a compromise,” said Derick Lennox, senior director at California County Superintendents, which represents school administrators and is supporting the bill. “(The bond) takes incremental, important steps toward equity that will do a lot of good.”

The bill includes some help for smaller and low-income districts, such as providing extra money to hire project managers and expanding the number of districts that qualify for hardship funds. It also sets aside 10 percent of the money for small districts.

The California School Boards Association is also supporting the bill, along with a companion bill, AB 2831, sponsored by Assemblymember Josh Hoover, a Republican from Folsom, that would provide more relief for small and low-income districts if the school bond passes in November.

“We’re more than sympathetic to the needs of small districts,” said association spokesperson Troy Flint. “But times are tight, and we feel it’s crucial to get a school bond on the ballot. … It’s not what we need, but it’s what we could get. Now we have to focus on getting it passed, for the health and safety of California students.”

Old heaters, outdated kitchens, no AC

Trinity County Superintendent Fabio Robles said that some of the schools in his county are so dilapidated that any money is welcome. Passing local bonds is almost impossible, he said, because the county is so poor. So schools are almost totally reliant on the state for repairs.

In Lewiston, the gym has no air conditioning and the kitchen dates from the 1950s, Robles said. At Van Duzen Elementary, a small K-8 school in the mountains, the heater is 40 years old.

“Would a 5-90 percent sliding scale have been better? Yes. But what’s being proposed now will be a big help to us,” Robles said. “I’ll take that any day of the week.”

In Lynwood, Superintendent Crosthwaite said he’s tired of low-income students having to put up with broken air conditioners and leaky roofs while their more affluent peers enjoy state-of-the-art facilities. His district, for example, is going to ask voters this fall to approve a bond for $80 million. Across town, Pasadena Unified is moving forward with a $900 million school facilities bond. If the state offers matching grants, Pasadena will get even more money.

Meanwhile, students in Lynwood Unified lack basic facilities, he said. A middle school only has a blacktop, no green space. An elementary school lacks hot water. The district doesn’t have enough performance spaces or science labs.

“Our kids think this is normal. It should not be ‘normal,’” Crosthwaite said. “In California we call ourselves progressive, but we need to take a hard look at how we allocate our resources.”

On June 27, the California Senate moved to advance Senate Bill (SB) 1327 which would impose a charge on major digital technology platforms to fund local news

by Antonio Ray Harvey

Last month, Sen. Steven Glazer (D-Orinda) vowed to bring back a journalism support bill he authored that had hit a snag in the legislative process.

A few weeks later, the lawmaker lived up to his promise.

On June 27, the California Senate moved to advance Senate Bill (SB) 1327 with a 27-7 vote under the Urgency Clause – special language contained in legislation that privileges it to take immediate effect after the governor signs it.

SB 1327 would impose a charge – called a “data extraction mitigation fee” in the bill — on major digital technology platforms such as Meta, Amazon, and Google to fund local news. Glazer pulled the bill from the floor in May when he discovered he didn’t have the minimum two-thirds votes for passage. Now that he has generated enough support to move the bill forward, Glazer called his push to pass it a “rescue effort.”

SB 1327 is now on its way to the Assembly for review.

“We are in a moment of peril in our democracy, and our hollowed-out newsrooms are in the center of that crisis. Let me provide some context – democracies are the exception in human history. It’s not if they will fail. it’s a matter of when they will fail,” Glazer said during the opening of his presentation during a hearing for the bill on the Senate floor.

Glazer continued, “Ours is 248 years young. Seventy-one percent of the world’s population is under autocracies. Now, in countries such as Hungary, Argentina, and Turkey, we see these democracies teetering. You simply have to see their actions to curtail and take control of independent news media that was keeping these democracies honest. The canary in the democracy mine is independent news.”

A vote on the urgency clause must precede a vote on the bill and requires a two-thirds vote for passage. Glazer’s bill got exactly the amount needed to move off the Senate floor.

Seven Senate Republicans voted against SB 1327, including Senate Majority Leader Brian Dahle (R-Bieber). Sen. Scott Thomas Wilk (R-Lancaster) was the lone member of the party that voted in favor of the bill.

SB 1327 has been getting pushback from digital tech giants and some publishers that are worried about losing advertising, the supposed threat of government influence, discrimination against larger publishers, and nonprofit newsrooms getting a slice of the mitigation fee.

Sen. Roger Niello (R-Roseville) voted against the bill. During the debate on the floor, Niello said it gives him “great pause to entertain a proposal” where over half the journalism industries today are “owned by hedge funds and individual investors,” he said.

The lawmaker who owns several high-end car dealerships added that the bill could bring “unintended consequences such as capital venture groups reaping the profits, should SB 1327 become law.

“That’s one of the things that happens when an industry goes through a drastic evolution…investors come in to take advantage of potential profit opportunities and investment opportunities,” Niello said of his concerns with SB 1327. “I am an unabashed capitalist myself. But they are not buying these newspaper groups for the sake of the mission of news reporting. To them it’s a business deal.”

Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa), who voted in favor of the bill, also had some concerns. He wants to make sure SB 1327 is legislation that would not fall into the hands of hedge funds that would purchase newspapers solely to reap funds because of the mitigation fee.

“What I’d like to see, by the time it comes back to the floor is that we have an opportunity to kind of see — maybe not a firm spending program — but at least something that has been thought out particularly so we’re not funding hedge funds,” Dodd said.

To qualify for the tax credit, news media outlets must initially circulate or distribute news content within the state of California and operate internet platforms.

SB 1327 proposes a 7.25% on gross receipts derived from data extraction transactions, according to the bill’s language. At the end of his presentation, Glazer made it clear that media outlets do not have to accept funds through the tax credit.

“This measure is content neutral (and) ownership neutral,” Glazer said. “If a publisher of an outlet doesn’t want to have the connection with a government through a tax credit, they don’t have to take it.”

Fees extracted from digital technology companies with a minimum of $2.5 billion in annual advertising revenue would provide $500 million in employment tax credits to news organizations in California. An additional $400 million in extracted fees would go directly to schools.

Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles) spoke about the ways public opinion, politics and civic life have been influenced by misinformation and disinformation since the decline of the journalism industry. A member of the California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC), Smallwood-Cuevas is a former journalist.

“These are efforts to make a difference,” Smallwood said of SB 1327. “I must applaud the author for his work particularly because the alternative must also include building a representative workforce within the newspaper industry, which this bill takes into account — ensuring that those who look like California tell the story of California.”