October 9, 2024—Guest commentator Jen Byers speaks with Managing Attorney John Affeldt and demand letter complainant Gary Hardie, Jr. regarding the inequities in California’s current system of distributing school facilities repair and modernization matching funds. Despite the fact that students across the state are currently denied equal access to quality facilities within their school districts, the state legislature has moved forward Proposition 2—which will replenish the state’s funds for school facilities repair and modernization, but does very little to address these inequities. This puts school districts with lower wealth in the position of having to decide whether or not to support a measure that will continue advantaging wealthier districts, but is currently the only option for additional school facilities funds.
“We recognize there’s a great need, and that’s what the status-quo supporters are betting on,” said John Affeldt, the managing attorney and education program director for Public Advocates. His nonprofit law firm believes the Prop. 2 funding model may violate California’s constitutional civil rights laws. They’re concerned districts are being backed into a corner.
“These starved districts, who are being disproportionately provided lesser funds for their needs, are so starved that they’ll support anything they can get from the state,” Affeldt told me.
Gary Hardie Jr., a Lynwood Unified School Board member, told me that the legacy of redlining has long affected the area’s property values and thus limits what the Los Angeles County district can borrow. Districts on public or tribal lands, for example, would be eligible for far less.
“Our maximum (bond capacity) is $200 million, which is at least a quarter billion lower than our (Los Angeles) counterpart in the neighborhood next door,” he said. “So, even if our (local bond measure) passes, and we’re fully funded at the maximum level of state matching funds, we’re still not even close to what other communities could bring in.”
“I sort of feel like people living in redlined, under-invested communities should not have to have increased taxation in order to fix this system in the first place,” Hardie said. “You’re making the people who are the victims of the problem to have to be the solution.”
