There
’s a move afoot in Santa Clara County to create what is
essentially a new taxing instrument – a countywide parcel tax – to
pay for teacher stipends.
There’s a move afoot in Santa Clara County to create what is essentially a new taxing instrument – a countywide parcel tax – to pay for teacher stipends.
The proposal, which would levy a $195 parcel tax throughout Santa Clara County and then redistribute the money to school districts, had been slated to be on the November ballot. But because the Legislature did not enact legislation allowing such a move, the plan has been put on hold.
The new tax was brought to you by the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, the same organization that schemed and bullied to get the tax passed for the BART-to-San-Jose boondoggle.
That aside, there are aspects to this proposal that raise major immediate concerns:
• The ability to float this proposal before voters was being made possible through “urgency” legislation pending in the state Senate.“Urgency” ought to be reserved for measures that have to do with unanticipated natural disasters or imminent threats to the state’s population, not a tax measure to change the law to fund teacher salaries.
The new law would, for the first time, allow a county to pass a parcel tax. That territory has been reserved for individual jurisdictions such as the City of Morgan Hill or the Morgan Hill School District.
• Specific measures, aka bonds, have not been used for public salaries. That’s a significant departure from capital projects such as roads or school buildings.
• Giving the power to the County Board of Supervisors or the County Office of Education to place countywide tax measures on the ballot adds yet another competing interest to local bond measures. Countywide tax measures could be, for example, competing with a local school bond measure.
Early supporters include Morgan Hill City Councilman Larry Carr and Gilroy School Trustee Bob Kraemer.
Once the $77 million tax is collected, the teacher stipend would be the same across all 32 school districts in the county. A parcel tax of $195 would mean a stipend of about $2,000 per teacher.
That means that the salaries for teachers, say, in Palo Alto would go up proportionately with the salaries in Gilroy which leads us to question this statement from Carr:
“We don’t want a district like Palo Alto, with more money, to have an edge to take your teachers away.”
Palo Alto’s going to retain the same edge under this proposal.
Now, if the money is somehow tied to merit increases and forces a change in how teachers are evaluated, retained and given increases, then this measure would truly mark a important and needed policy shift in public education.
Right now – until it’s proven otherwise – it appears to be just another special interest tax.
Yes, our school are not funded adquately, but this is not how to change that.
