When the state Supreme Courtroom let stand final week a controversial measure that enables Alameda Unified College District to fund worker salaries by a property tax, Superintendent Pasquale Scuderi stated he felt extraordinarily relieved. The years-long authorized battle had consumed his time, threatened the district’s potential to retain expertise, and put a full 20% of the district’s funding at stake.
“There have been doomsday eventualities we didn’t need to take into account,” Scuderi stated. “It created a number of anxiousness.”
However though the choice to uphold Measure A was a major victory for the district, it did little to ensure a steady basis for a district that has struggled to acquire sustainable, long-term sources of funding.
Measure A was handed in 2020, levying a tax of $0.265 per constructing sq. foot on all Alameda property homeowners, capped at $7999. That measure, together with Measure B1, which was accredited in 2016, supplies greater than $22 million per 12 months to AUSD’s funds. The district says the cash is essential to “sustaining core applications for college kids and aggressive salaries for employees.”
After Measure A handed in 2020, Alameda resident Leland Traiman filed a lawsuit, alleging the cap violated a state regulation that requires a faculty district’s particular taxes to “apply uniformly to all taxpayers or all actual property.”
Superior Courtroom Decide Julia Spain initially dominated in favor of Traiman, however the First District Courtroom of Enchantment reversed Decide Spain’s resolution in August of this 12 months.
When the Supreme Courtroom of California declined to evaluate the choice final Friday, the lengthy court docket battle was put to mattress. Nevertheless it did little to make sure the long-term existence of the income, now so essential to the district’s survival. That’s as a result of, In only a few quick months, the district’s parcel taxes will as soon as once more be put earlier than voters.
Final week, a survey offered by the district at a faculty board assembly confirmed that the measures could now not have the assist required for approval. Though doubtless voters supported renewing the measure by a margin of 54% to 36%, that quantity continues to be far decrease than the 67% % required for them to move.
“If I’m sincere, I’m uncomfortable with how slender the margin is,” Scuderi stated.
Though Scuderi stated the numbers had been just like the preliminary polling in 2020, when the measure first handed, there’s some concern that assist for these kinds of measures is waning in Alameda.
Scuderi believes a post-pandemic financial setting the place households are combating inflation and excessive fuel costs is a possible issue within the vote. Alameda additionally has quite a lot of personal and constitution faculties, which can have some residents questioning why they’re being requested to fund faculties their very own children don’t attend.
To counter these hurdles, the district is bundling two separate parcel taxes collectively for the measure in March, in order that they don’t should re-explain the necessity for the funding yearly. They’ve additionally labored to simplify their messaging, and clarify how funding gaps on the federal degree, particularly surrounding particular training, pressure them to show to native sources. The district can also be establishing a citizen’s oversight committee, in order that residents can see how and the place the cash is being spent.
If the funding had been pulled, the district would doubtless introduce wage freezes and even roll-back raises. The shortfall might result in college closures or consolidations, reductions in workers, and quite a lot of different cuts. The district’s salaries, which have been introduced as much as the county common due to the parcel tax, would doubtless once more fall into the underside quartile.
Scuderi hopes the reduction supplied by the court docket victory doesn’t show to be short-lived.
“Neighborhood faculties have all the time been a giant worth in Alameda,” Scuderi stated. “It’s as much as us to make the argument that good public faculties are a part of what make a local people thrive economically, not simply educationally.”
