Aside from the presidential and California Senate races this November, Bay Area voters also have some important measures to consider. One of those is Proposition 2.
Prop 2 is a $10 billion bond measure to build schools, with most of that money going to kindergarten through eighth grade schools in the state.
School districts like Alum Rock in San Jose said they desperately need the help – not to build new, state-of-the-art buildings, but to add maintenance to all the old classrooms they currently have.
"We’re not in a position to just build new schools. We’re a working class district," Alum Rock Union School District board member Andres Quintero said. "The assessed valuation from our properties limits what we can ask from the voters."
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Aptitud Community Academy at Goss in the Alum Rock school district is considered one of the newest schools in the district even though it opened in 1980. Maintenance and repair calls are frequent.
"In the past we’ve gone out there and took care of the piping and still nevertheless we still get concerns that have to be addressed," Quintero said.
That's why Quintero is supporting Prop 2. It would raise $8.5 billion in bonds for schools statewide and another $1.5 billion for community colleges.
"Prop 2 does allow us to take what we can raise from voters locally and draw down resources from the state bond in order to meet the needs of our district," Quintero said. "It supplements the dollars that we do have."
The measure is running into opposition from the Santa Clara County Libertarian Party and Mark Hinkle, president of the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association.
"The concern we have from the Libertarian point of view is bond measures, like home mortgages, it can be very deceptive because they tell you it's $10 billion, but what is it really gonna cost by the time you add in principle and interest for 30 or 40 years?" Hinkle said. "It’s probably going to be more like $18 to $20 billon."
Hinkle said declining school enrollment in the state ought to nullify the measure.
"Why are we investing in more money in schools when enrollment is dropping precipitously?" he said.
Quintero said he wishes the proposition wasn’t necessary. But in a district with low property tax revenues and aging buildings, Alum Rock said its schools need all the help they can get.
