Voters Support School Funding in Three States

This November, voters in Colorado, California, and Ohio rejected measures limiting education and school funding. Colorado citizens suspended a budget cap, allowing the state to use its improved revenues to fund education and various other state programs. In California, voters firmly defeated three ballot proposals on teacher tenure, teachers' union dues, and school funding, while approving billions in bonds for facilities. Furthermore, Ohio voters rejected funding rollbacks.

Funding Measures

In both Colorado and California, voters decided measures concerning state spending. Colorado voters suspended the state's 1992 strict spending cap, called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR). TABOR limited state and local spending growth to the rate of inflation, plus annual population growth; all other revenue was given back to taxpayers as rebates. Colorado's voters modified TABOR to allow state government to use an estimated $3.7 billion over the next five years for health care, K-12 and postsecondary education, and transportation projects.

Although Colorado's TABOR left education, health, and transportation underfunded, TABOR laws are being proposed in many states. At the least, though, according to Heath McGregor at the Bell Policy Center, the election has “sent a message to the rest of the country how Colorado has felt about the restrictions of TABOR.”

California voters also voted down a spending limit measure. Voters defeated by a wide 62-to-38 margin Prop. 76, which would have limited spending from the state's General Fund (which supplies K-12 education) to an average of revenue growth for the previous three years. The proposal also would have significantly altered the constitutional minimum school funding guarantee established with Prop. 98 in 1988 and given the governor authority to reduce state spending without legislative approval under certain circumstances.

A large majority of Californians approved huge bonds to increase local school funding: Bay Area voters approved a $1 billion bond, while Los Angeles voters passed a $4 billion bond. The funds will go towards new school construction, and the modernization and maintenance of existing schools. The bond approval is proof, says West Contra Costa school Trustee Charles Ramsey, that “people strongly believe that the main priority in this state is public education.”

Voters Reject Rollbacks

Voters in Ohio faced particularly confusing school finance proposals. Anti-tax groups have tried to roll back previous school levies, and school districts have gone to the ballot on their own to protect their funding. Because state law allows only one attempted rollback of school levies every five years, 16 districts in southwestern Ohio proposed the minimum rollback of 0.01 mill in hopes of warding off proposals for a major reduction for the next five years.

This unusual strategy worked for the Mason school system, which flooded the ballot with seven referenda asking for the minimum reduction and successfully blocked anti-tax groups from filing larger rollback requests for the next five years. Voters rejected the measures, and the schools thus protected $24.8 million of levy revenue. The same approach worked for 14 of the 16 school districts; in two districts, however, voters approved the minimum rollback and decreased school funding by the 0.01 mills.

Teacher-related Measures

A solid majority of 58.5 percent of Denver voters approved on November 1 a pay-for-performance plan, which gives teachers nine different ways to earn money on top of a base salary, including teaching in high-poverty schools and meeting student achievement goals. Under this overhaul of the traditional pay structure, some teachers can earn up to a 40% increase of their salaries over a 25-year career. “ProComp” would increase the district's payroll by about $25 million annually and is financed by a property-tax increase that would amount to $24 per year on every $100,000 of a home's value.

The Denver measure is the product of a pilot developed over six years by a joint effort between Denver's teachers and the school district. The main Denver teachers' union endorsed the plan; current teachers have a period of six years in which to opt-in, while new hires are automatically enrolled. Educators around the country will be watching the implementation of ProComp, as leaders in Vermont, South Dakota, Massachusetts, Texas, and Florida are discussing similar measures.

A week later, Californians defeated education-related proposals to lengthen the probationary period for teacher tenure from two to five years and require unions to seek consent for political uses of members' dues. Prop. 74, the tenure proposal, also wanted to allow principals to fire teachers after two unsatisfactory performance reviews. Proponents claimed the proposal would help weed out poor-performing teachers, but teachers unions said that it would leave teachers vulnerable to hostile school bureaucracy.

Union leaders also campaigned against Prop. 75, which would have required public employee unions to obtain written consent from individual members before using their dues for political contributions. Supporters argued that the initiative would give California workers “free choice” in how their wages are spent, but the majority of voters disagreed.

Prepared by Katherine Lu, November 8, 2005