LAUSD at one time had 600,000 students. Today it has just over 400,000. In ten years that will be down to 350,000 or less. If you took out the illegal aliens in LAUSD they would be at 350,000 today and around 250,000 in ten years.
Yet they want a $9 billion bond. Actually that is $9 billion for the unions to spend and $9 billion for Wall Street to make on the interest for these bonds. Literally, the passage of this bond only gives the educrats 50% of the money.
At the same time the State has a $10 billion school bond ($20 billion with interest) and a $10 billion environmental scam bond ($20 billion when interest is included). The Bay Area has a $20 billion housing bond ($40,000,000,000 with interest. Between just these four bonds we have $100 billion in bonds, with $50 billion going to Wall Street.
Think taxes are high? Think we have high inflation? Think we have businesses fleeing? Wait till November 6 if all these pass.
Worse, we would be giving LAUSD money for schools that give functional illiterates diplomas—and several High Schools have less than 10% of th graduates eligible for State College or University—total failures.
LAUSD board votes to add $9 billion school construction bond to November ballot
MALLIKA SESHADRI, EdSource, 8/8/24 https://edsource.org/2024/lausd-board-votes-to-add-9-billion-school-construction-bond-to-november-ballot/717200
Voters in November will decide whether to give the Los Angeles Unified School District $9 billion in bond money to upgrade and improve school facilities, the school board decided unanimously Wednesday.
The bond is the largest ever put on the ballot by Los Angeles Unified and is just shy of a statewide school bond measure for $10 billion that will also be on the November ballot. For LAUSD’s bond measure to pass, at least 55% of voters will need to vote in favor — which would lead to an uptick in property taxes by roughly $25.04 for every $100,000 of assessed value, according to a district estimate.
District officials stated that the money is critical, and its schools’ needs urgent.
“We have seen schools that are built as Taj Mahals, with the latest and greatest technology, with beautiful green spaces, with outdoor classrooms, with stunning athletic facilities,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said Wednesday. “Then you drive down the road one mile, and you see a completely different world that I cannot explain, and frankly, I cannot accept.”
More than 60% of LAUSD campuses are at least a half-century old, according to a board report. And schools across the district have more than $80 billion “of unfunded school facility and technology needs.”
Meanwhile, the costs of construction continue to grow — and have soared by 36% in the past four years, according to the report.
If passed, the $9 billion in bond money would help with efforts, including:
- Ensuring schools have adequate safety features and are seismically sound
- Modernizing campuses in-keeping with “21st century learning”
- Improving disability access
- Reducing discrepancies across older and newer schools
- Expanding outdoor spaces, transitioning to a new food service model and improving energy efficiency
According to district materials, roughly “525 school buildings may need to be retrofitted, modernized, or replaced for earthquake safety.”
Amid widespread support at Wednesday’s meeting, Michael Hamner, the chair of LAUSD’s Bond Oversight Committee, said the district did not involve his committee enough in the bond’s development.
“While we understand the district’s infrastructure needs are greater than the pool of resources currently available to fund them, the process by which this bond measure was developed and put forward, without consultation of key stakeholders groups such as ourselves — and therefore outside public view — prevents us from providing any meaningful comment,” he said Wednesday.
In response, Carvalho stated that while the process of moving forward with this bond was condensed, the district will “not spare any opportunity” to consider the views of various stakeholders.
Amidst a declining district enrollment, some have also claimed the district should wait to move forward with a bond measure until they have a better understanding of their needs — especially as LAUSD is relying on taxpayers’ money.
Carvalho doubled down, however, on the project’s urgency.
He said that regardless of potential changes to enrollment and square footage, the district’s “critical need for facilities improvement will still be by far an excess of what we currently have and what we will have in the near future.”
According to school board member Rocio Rivas, improved facilities are associated with better academic outcomes, improved attendance and better mental health among students.
“Kids know when they have not the best — they don’t have it as good,” Board President Jackie Goldberg said Wednesday. “And they do feel, somehow or another, that maybe [they’re] just not worth as much.”
If these bonds pass the tax burden will fall on the middle income earners. There will be more tax payers leaving the state. Read “Personal Opinions of One Common Man” available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.