LAUSD wants another tax? Yes (a parcel tax to pay for operating expenses, like administrators)

LA Daily News ^ | 1/17/09 | Editorial

[NormsRevenge]

Barely two months since Los Angeles Unified School District officials duped the area's generous voters into signing away an additional $7 billion of their money for a vague school-improvement plan, the officials are at it again.

That's right. In the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, officials who have secured about $22 billion in construction bonds from property owners in the district in recent years are thinking of passing the hat again.

So what's this new measure for? More buildings? Technology? Maintenance? School lunches for poor kids?

Nope, the district wants a parcel tax to pay for operating expenses - like administrators' six-figure salaries, consultant fees and teacher pay. You know, the things that are supposed to be funded by the property tax bills we already pay.

The problem is that the LAUSD is feeling the same pain as every other California governmental agency, from the state down to cities. Tax revenue is down all around, and everyone's hurting. LAUSD officials expect $400 million less from Sacramento than they had anticipated.

But rather than cut expenses, scale back the bloated bureaucracy or programs, they just ask for more.

And we thought former Superintendent David Brewer III was living in a fantasy world when he suggested last summer that what the LAUSD really needed was an additional $60 billion in the next decade - not just the $7 billion he was pushing for at that time. Just to put that in perspective, it's more than $85,000 per student - or perhaps even more per student because the LAUSD's enrollment is decreasing all the time.

We might as well use the money to simply pay for the college education of every kid in Los Angeles and save kids the experience of attending the LAUSD's schools.

Most unfortunately, the proposal is being floated by new Superintendent Ray Cortines, who has promised to downsize the administration while protecting the classrooms.

"We have to show signs that we're responsible and that we are not just asking for another buck," Cortines said earlier this week.

We agree. And it's going to take more than a year - which is when that proposal for a new parcel tax might make it to the ballot - for the district to prove it is responsible. Until then, school officials should refrain from asking for additional money.

Meanwhile, residents must speak up. If they don't now, the requests will never end.

[rogator]

“It’s never enough for the (union) piggies at the trough.”

Uh, the administrators and consultants with the six figure salaries might be a lot of things, but they are not in the teacher’s union.
The average teacher in LA makes $47K.
Not to say anything good about a teacher union, far from it; but honestly, would you sign a contract to teach in LA for $47K?

[Tony in Hawaii]

Great, so they can buy more historic buildings and tear them down, like the Ambassador Hotel.

[bpjam]

there is no low, too low. literally.

[bpjam]

you forgot the largest factor - Mexicans. A huge percentage of the students in LAUSD schools are Mexicans or Mexican-Americans. They vote for anything with the word ‘school’ in it on a ballot (and yes, illegals vote in LA and have for a long, long time).

Since free education for their children is one of the biggest perks to having invaded America, they are all for trying to get as much money into the schools as possible since they aren’t the taxpayers who are going to be paying for those bonds.

I saw it myself over a decade ago when this trend started. And now its an annual thing. Nobody has any idea how much money has been authorized or spent and that is the way the bureaucrats and their illegal fans like it.