03/29/2024

Second Tax Measure To Fund California Schools Proposed For 2020 Ballot

The California School Boards Association is exploring whether to place a $15 billion tax for K-12 schools, early education and community colleges before voters, creating the possibility of dueling tax initiatives on the statewide ballot in November 2020.

Together with the Association of California School Administrators — its only partner so far — the school boards association has created a “Full and Fair Funding” election fund and website to solicit support. Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, who chairs the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance, is shopping the idea around the Legislature to see if there’s enough support to ask legislators to put the tax proposal on next year’s ballot.

Two polls this year put support for a split-roll initiative in the mid-50s (54 percent of likely voters backed it in the Public Policy Institute of California poll and 55 percent of voters in a poll by the nonprofit PACE and USC). However, business groups are vowing to bankroll what could be an expensive effort to defeat it and are organizing already with FightforProp13.org, led by the California Business Roundtable, and Californians to Stop Higher Property Taxes, led by commercial real estate interests.

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