Poll finds the less you make, the more you like Brown’s school finance reform - by John Fensterwald
More Californian voters favor than oppose Gov. Jerry Brown’s sweeping plan to reform school finance, and most are against the idea of lowering the threshold for approving local school parcel taxes from two-thirds to a 55 percent majority, according to a new statewide poll.
Gov. Jerry Brown
An even 50 percent of respondents told pollsters they favored – while 39 percent opposed – the idea of having “some money diverted from middle and upper class children to low income children and English language learners.” That’s a key element of the Local Control Funding Formula for schools that the governor is proposing to phase in over the next seven years. Brown plans to use increased revenue from Proposition 30, approved in November, and the growth in state revenues, and he adds the caveat that, in shifting resources to needy children, no district will receive less money than it currently spends.
Results of the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll of 1,501 registered voters broke down along economic and ethnic lines, with those whose children would likely benefit being more supportive of Brown’s plan.
“There’s a real dividing line. ‘What’s in it for my kids?’ is probably what the divide is,” said Drew Lieberman, vice president of the Democratic