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The San Ramon Valley Unified School District’s Board of Education voted in favor of pursuing a renewal of the district’s existing parcel tax and the addition of a supplemental tax via a special election.
Trustees discussed the two parcel taxes and plans for a special election at their Jan. 30 meeting, pointing towards the long history of the existing $144 per parcel tax and the need for a new supplemental tax, which would be assessed at $98 per parcel if approved by voters.
Both measures were passed unanimously by the board that night, and faced little controversy during discussion with the exception of one public comment on the parcel tax renewal by Mike Arata, a longtime advocate against school taxes.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have a sign that’s ready for prime time with this one, so I’ll just proceed with the text,” said Arata, who frequently brings poster board presentations for his comments at district meetings.
“The message: For numerous reasons, you should reject the two parcel tax measures that you’ve intended to adopt this evening,” Arata continued. “I know you will not reject them, but the request needs to be made anyway.”
Arata alleged that the district’s “real world financial position is better” than SRVUSD officials characterize it, pointing to a failed parcel tax measure in 1991 and alleging a “pattern of revenue growth and general fund spending that far exceeded reasonable correlation with the compounded effects of inflation and enrollment growth combined.”
“In the 33 years since 1991, compounded inflation and enrollment growth – now enrollment decline – have together grown by a factor of 4.4 in absolute terms,” Arata said. “In other words, inflation rates times enrollment change combined is 4.4 times what that factor was in 1991. But meanwhile, salaries and benefits have multiplied upward by a factor of 7.2 and total general fund spending by 7.8. The net result is that your total general fund spending would need to diminish by $179 million to regain parity with the effect of inflation and enrollment change since 1991, or by $94 million to regain parity with 2009 when the current parcel tax amount was voted in.”
Arata also called text in both parcel tax measures stating that funds collected in the renewed and supplemental taxes would not be used for administrative salaries “misrepresentative,” calling on the board to withdraw that language and proceeding to bring forth critiques of Superintendent John Malloy’s salary and actions during his tenure at the helm of the district.
“There’s much more that I could say, but long and short, you don’t need – and you certainly don’t deserve – to extend and also to increase the existing parcel tax,” Arata said. “You should instead retire the existing parcel tax, not renew and increase it. Superintendent Malloy’s compensation is emblematic of the problem. He was paid nearly $341,000 in annual salary alone when he came in the 2020-2021 school year. Three years later, despite serious employee scandals, despite test score drop offs and concealment of just how bad those declines are, despite national notoriety for PRISM club concealment, despite Mr. Malloy’s crude slandering of the Cal High stunt team – he’s now paid 18% more while Bay Area CPI inflation rose only 12% and enrollment dropped 5%,” he added.
At the start of the board’s discussion of the first measure – renewing the existing $144 parcel tax – Area 2 Trustee Shelley Clark fired back at Arata’s allegations and pointed to longstanding financial struggles at the district.
“Before I became a board member I was a parent in this district. I have two kids who went through these schools and I was heavily involved as a parent leader for 15 or 20 years,” Clark said. “As part of that commitment to the district I served on the parcel oversight committee for three years as a chairperson, and I can tell you some of the comments made tonight are totally fictitious.”
Clark said that, contrary to Arata’s allegations of inappropriate spending at the district, SRVUSD is “one of the most underfunded, lowest funded districts” in the state.
“We struggle every year to make sure that we are able to provide our students with the best education we can and that our community expects,” Clark said. “To say that we don’t need these funds is abominable. It’s not true.”
Clark added that district trustees take fiscal responsibility “very seriously” as a commitment to voters as well as district families and students.
“I can assure you that not one dime of our funding is wasted or that we don’t need it,” Clark said. “Because we struggle every year with our budget and we struggle to maintain and attract good teachers, especially in special education. So please – we need these funds. We need this to pass.”
Clark said that money from the existing tax are currently used to fund dozens of teaching positions in the district, and pointed to continued struggles brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic with learning loss and mental health troubles.Â
“To listen to somebody say that we don’t need this is so infuriating to me,” Clark said. “Because I have been on the inside of this for a long time and these funds presently fund 56 teachers. That’s where the money has gone for the first parcel tax. And I was on the oversight committee that made sure that those funds went for that purpose because we felt that it had the biggest impact on our students and their education. If any of you have any doubts or any questions about these parcel taxes and what they are paying for please, my door is open. Come talk to me.”
First-term Area 1 Trustee Jesse vanZee inquired about the $1.4 million price tag of the proposed special election and the background of the existing parcel tax, saying that he had received a number of questions about the election cost.
Stella Kemp, assistant superintendent of business operations for the district, noted that the cost of the special election would be the same even if just one tax measure were to be placed on ballots, and outlined the reasoning behind calling for a special election for both the renewal and the supplemental tax as well as the timing.
“Our district has had a long tradition of asking this question about the parcel tax in a special election, and this is done primarily because we don’t want the water to be muddied by the other local politics or national or state initiatives that are on the ballot at that time,” Kemp said.
Kemp added that while the existing parcel tax doesn’t expire until 2025, putting it on a ballot this year would allow the district time to try again to get the renewal passed ahead of its expiration.
Area 5 Trustee Rachel Hurd added that while the timing would allow the district another chance to seek the renewal if it fails this year, the goal was to have it and the supplemental tax both pass in the same election rather than spending additional funds on another election, as well as emphasizing the advantage of a special election over a general election.
“We want to do this once,” Hurd said. “We had a few that we had to do twice, and haven’t had to do that in a while because we know how to do this. We have a well-educated community, and when we can take the time to communicate with them and campaign right, it’s successful.”
vanZee noted that while the price tag of the special election raises questions for the board about fiscal responsibility, the advantage of having the measures pass in a single election rather than being sought in multiple elections outweighs the cost of the special election.
“There is that thought in my head of if we do this during the general I think we have large community support for it, but then it comes at the higher risk of having the cost for the general and then potentially the cost for a special, which if you can just get it done with one, it’s actually more fiscally responsible to approach it this way,” vanZee said.
Clark noted that while the supplemental tax would increase the cost to voters if approved, the total cost would continue to be lower than comparable parcel taxes in other districts.
“If you look at the districts around us that have parcel taxes, their parcel taxes are five, seven, eight hundred dollars per year,” Clark said. “We’re asking for roughly $250 – 65 and over, if you don’t want to pay, you can file for an exemption.”
The board voted unanimously to approve the resolution calling for a renewal of the existing tax in a special election this May before turning the discussion towards the supplemental tax.
Longtime Danville resident and former SRVUSD parent Shirley Lapp offered a public comment at the start of that discussion aimed at highlighting the importance of educational funding and her longtime support of local funding for the district.
“Would the district survive the loss of local funding? Sure it would. But when schools have to stretch every dollar to cover the basic courses we lose options,” Lapp said. “Classes get bigger and no matter how well they’re taught, courses become generic.”
“Better funding allows the district, teachers and students the flexibility and innovation needed to create classes and environments that foster a desire to learn,” Lapp continued. “Children need arenas to explore their interests and talents whether it’s literature, science, vocations, performing arts, public service or any other area. Kids aren’t generic. All students need more than a generic education. Continued local funding will help provide the education our students deserve.”
In the subsequent discussion on the supplemental tax, trustees clarified that funds from that tax would be used differently than funds from the existing tax, specifically being sought as a way to continue funding for programs that were funded from state grants aimed at supporting students’ increased needs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There are two funding sources expiring – the parcel tax will expire and we want to renew it, and the other is the state $6 million in grant money for learning loss and all the things that the district used to put in so much of what we heard about tonight to address social, emotional and academic needs for students in our multi-tiered systems of support and just creating all that structure,” Hurd said.
“But the learning loss isn’t gone,” she continued. “The structures are there; they still need to be supported, the services need to be provided, and so the idea with this supplement is it’s filling that hole – not filling it but, helping to fill it, because I think it’s really important that the community understands that both parcel taxes — it helps, it doesn’t fix it.”
Hurd added that it was to the district’s advantage in terms of finances and other resources to “layer” the supplemental tax into the same election as the existing tax.
“The beauty of right now I think is that we’re trying this layered thing but layered at the same time so it’s more transparent – this is for this and this is for this – and so far once we can take the time to talk to people, it’s resonating,” Hurd said.
The board voted unanimously to pass the supplemental tax measure at the conclusion of that night’s discussion.
The passage of both measures means that the district will now call for a special election on May 7, following the upcoming March primary and well ahead of the upcoming general election in November. In order to pass, both measures would require at least a 2/3 vote in their favor.
