Measure A, a parcel tax critical to maintaining employment and program funding at Palo Alto Unified School District schools, passed with 79.36% of the votes cast approving in a special election tonight, according to the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters election results.
According to Superintendent Kevin Skelly, the excitement and dedication of the community to the cause was truly remarkable.
“I didn’t think it was possible to get 80 percent of Palo Alto to agree on anything,” Skelly joked in a toast at a celebration in Palo Alto. “People care about kids here. Tonight was a big yes to our children, to our future, to the community here.”
Excitement was the word of the hour. At one celebration hosted by Palo Alto Council of PTAs members Sunny and Dan Dykwel, nearly every member of the large and diverse crowd sported a grin, a champagne flute, or both. Campaign co-chair Tracy Stevens’s address to the attendants was peppered with laughter, applause, and the occasional supportive whoop from the audience.
“It’s an excited crowd,” said school board member Camille Townsend.
Townsend emphasized that supporters of Measure A should be excited tonight, primarily because the margin of victory for this parcel tax is the highest yet in the district.
“We’ve set new history,” Townsend said. “We’ve set a new edge of victory…We have every reason to be proud.”
Nearly everyone in attendance agreed that a united community was the determining factor in the overwhelming success of the measure. Almost every group of constituents, from students to teachers and from parents to residents with no direct stake in the schools, played an important part in the campaign.
“If we didn’t have the teachers’ involvement at the level we did, we could not have done this,” Stevens said.
Stevens also highlighted the sheer numerical scale of community involvement; in terms of phone banks, which played a key part in the campaign, 500 volunteers called 25000 voters. Roughly 700 people did some kind of volunteer work, according to Stevens.
“I think that’s really a great statement about this community,” Stevens said.
The vote was 15,910 in favor to 4,139 against, according to the SCC website. As a special election this year, voters could only vote by mail or by dropping off their ballots at City Hall.
The city had structured its budget expecting that Measure A would pass.
“We made our budget based on this passing,” Skelly said.
If voters had struck down the measure, $11.2 million would have disappeared from the PAUSD system, along with a projected loss of $7 million of state funding and an increase in enrollment projected to cost $3 million to the district, according to the Support Palo Alto Schools 2010 website.
Skelly reiterated the importance of the Measure A money for the community.
“We’re going to have to tighten our belts,” Skelly said. “This [Measure A] makes it possible to provide the kinds of opportunities that we need.”
Without Measure A funds, the combination of deep budget cuts and increased district costs could have led to as many as 105 teacher layoffs, nearly 15 percent of the teacher work force, according to the Support Palo Alto Schools 2010 Web site. Closing an elementary school would have also been a possibility, according to the Support Palo Alto Schools 2010 Web site.
The tax for Palo Alto Unified School District will be levied at a fixed rate for the next six years with a two percent per year escalation adjustment, according to the SCC Measure A voter information packet. It serves as a continuation of a previous parcel tax approved in 2005. Currently, each household pays $493 per year; Measure A increases that amount to $589, or $8 more per month.
To maintain accountability, the text of Measure A also mandates review of expenditures by an independent committee.
Despite this mandate, Townsend believes the community already had faith in how PAUSD spends its money.
“I think the community thinks the school district uses money wisely,” Townsend says. “It asks for money only when it needs it.
The overwhelming success of this parcel tax sets an example for the rest of California to follow in terms of breaking free of the government to fund schools, according to school board member Barbara Klausner.
“This [parcel tax] is a new reality for not just Palo Alto but California and our schools,” Klausner said. “What you have done is set the bar high and told the state of California this is what we need to do to protect our schools.”
Most importantly, however, this success represents what makes Palo Alto special, according to Skelly.
“This campaign was Palo Alto at its finest,” Skelly said.
“You’ve got the best of Palo Alto, from the sense of joy to the whole community coming together,” he added.
Measure A includes an optional senior citizen exemption; the only qualifiers are age and Palo Alto residency, according to the text of the measure.
Similar parcel tax measures also passed with wide margins in the Fremont Union High School District, Lakeside Joint School District, Loma Prieta Joint Elementary School District, and Union Elementary School District. The total voter turnout across all precincts was 43.05%, with 70,010 ballots cast, according to the SCC website.