A Warning From California: Don'T Let This Happen In Wisconsin!

By Jan Anderson
Editor, California Teachers Association

As a person from Wisconsin now living in California, I am occasionally asked about the differences between the two states. My "safe" response is to mention the obvious: climate and diversity — both geographic and cultural. If I am in the mood for a political conversation, I suggest that Wisconsinites still believe in the social contract between communities and their schools, while Californians passed Proposition 13.

Jan Anderson was editor of News & Views for 18 years before moving on to the California Teachers Association in 1988.

I hope that I will always be able to defend Wisconsin's relatively generous support of its schools. As a reader of the WEAC Web site on the Internet, I know that WEAC is fighting school revenue caps, an increasingly inequitable school finance system, teacher salary restrictions and other measures that are threatening the state's tradition of support for quality public education.

When I moved to California eight years ago, Prop. 13 — the granddaddy of all revenue cutting schemes — had been in effect for 10 years, and was still fresh in the public mind. My new neighbors smiled as they told me of the thousands of dollars the ballot initiative had saved them in property taxes. As for me, I estimate that I would pay at least twice as much in property tax if my house were in the Badger State.

Prop. 13 was ripe for passage in the real estate boom of the 1970s when property values and property taxes skyrocketed. According to Money magazine, some property owners saw their property taxes rising 10% a month. When the legislature failed to address the problem, Prop. 13 authors Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann easily qualified their revolutionary initiative for the statewide ballot.

Breaks for billionaires

Not only did Prop. 13 cut taxes by a whopping 57%, it also created a dual class of taxpayers.

In the first class are individuals and businesses who owned their property (homes, apartment buildings or commercial property) in 1978, the year Prop. 13 passed. Their taxes were rolled back to 1% of the assessed value in 1975, the year before the boom.

In the second class are those who purchased property after 1978. They pay property taxes based on 1% of the actual purchase price. In other words, the annual taxes on a $200,000 house are $2,000 a year. For both classes, the annual tax increase can be no more than 2%.

This situation has created outrageous inequities. New homeowners are paying as much as 10 to 20 times the taxes of neighbors in identical houses who have stayed put.

To demonstrate this absurdity to out-of-state visitors, I like to take them on a sightseeing tour of San Francisco's exclusive Pacific Heights neighborhood. As we drive past a mansion overlooking the San Francisco Bay owned by oil heir and arts patron Gordon Getty, I tell them that Getty pays less property taxes than I do. I base this on a newspaper article featuring a photo of the 18-room, seven-bath mansion that says Getty pays $3,500 a year in property taxes on a property worth $8 million to $10 million.

Teachers buy class supplies

Californians have been slow to make the connection between Prop. 13 tax cuts and the deterioration of their schools. This probably has something to do with the propaganda peddled by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which says that if schools would only stop wasting money they would have enough.

Nothing could be more absurd. Recently, I visited a high school built in the 1960s located in an upper middle class district in northern California. A teacher from Wisconsin would be shocked at its rundown condition. Despite efforts of teachers and support personnel to keep the facility orderly and clean, it suffered from years of deferred maintenance. I counted 43 students in one crowded English class, which is not atypical.

Yes, there are new school buildings in California. But they are few and far between, largely because of a provision in Prop. 13 that changed the requirement for passage of a local bond measure from a simple majority to a two-thirds vote.

State funds for construction have disappeared. Over $11 billion is needed for new construction and modernization of existing buildings by 2000, with more than $7 billion already on request.

Prop. 13, combined with the state's economic woes and rising student enrollment, have been devastating for California's students — and teachers.

Throughout the 1970s and early '80s, California teacher salaries ranked 5th in the nation; today they have slipped to 8th. Undoubtedly, they would have fallen much further without a strong California Teachers Association (CTA) behind them at the bargaining table — and if it had not been for slow teacher salary growth in other states, including Wisconsin.

Students and their parents are paying hundreds of dollars each school year for a vast array of services once provided to them at no charge, from daily school bus rides to field trips, lab fees and sports programs. Teachers shell out hundreds, even thousands, of dollars of their own money to buy classroom supplies. This practice is so common that one legislator has introduced a bill to give teachers a credit on their state income taxes for money they spend on classroom supplies.

California can afford more

One of the most telling statistics is that in 1972, when Ronald Reagan was governor, California spent 5.6% of its personal income on public schools. Today, that has dropped to 3.6%. By contrast, Wisconsin spends 4.9% of personal income on education.

California, among the top 10 states in per-pupil spending for schools in 1969, is now 41st. Wisconsin is 11th.

According to Dean Nafziger, a former executive director of the WestEd education research laboratory in San Francisco, "Rather than a stake in the heart, [Proposition 13] has meant slow starvation; it's taken time for the effects to show. Californians who've gradually learned to make do with less don't see the depth of erosion that's occurred in every aspect of our schools."

Class sizes

California's school library system ranks 50th in the nation in the ratio of books and librarians to students. In 1994, more than one-third of California's public school libraries lacked a full- or part-time librarian.

Art, music, phy ed and driver ed are either nonexistent or severely cut back in most districts.

According to a music teacher in Sacramento, the elementary and middle schools had a full music program including band and orchestra and choir before Prop. 13.

"I was one of the lucky ones who didn't get laid off," she recalls. "We have had no new band instruments in 20 years. The only way the district will buy a new one is when one is stolen and insurance money is available."

No one expects Prop. 13 to be overturned. However, there are some promising signs. In 1993, CTA overwhelmingly defeated a statewide voucher initiative, which was sparked by the damage that Prop. 13 did to public schools.

CTA's efforts to educate the public through extensive teacher-paid media campaigns about California schools' huge class sizes are finally paying off. Governor Pete Wilson and the Legislature now see class-size reduction as a popular political issue and are willing to spend money to do something about the problem. Wilson and many legislators are promoting a $3 billion statewide bond initiative for new school construction.

CTA leaders are pleased at polls showing the public is beginning to understand the depth of the problem and support more school aid.

The Prop. 13 lesson for Wisconsin is to fight strongly now against school district revenue controls and teacher salary caps. These programs have begun the "slow starvation" process that will undermine Wisconsin public schools.

Posted April 28, 1997