Steve Lopez: Why Measure EE Lost and What It Means for the City’s Future—And America’s Future
Steve Lopez, a columnist for the L.A. Times, is outraged by the low and negative vote on Measure EE. He wrote that city gave a collective shrug.
On this, the last week of school before summer break in the Los Angeles Unified School District, voters have sent a loud and clear message to roughly 600,000 students:
Your schools may be crumbling, your libraries may be closed, your class sizes may be unmanageably large, about 90% of you live in poverty and thousands of you are homeless, but who cares?
The Measure EE parcel tax on Tuesday’s ballot needed two-thirds approval and didn’t even get 50%. It would have cost the average homeowner about 75 cents a day. As supporters pointed out, California is in the bottom tier of funding per pupil nationally, and New York City schools spend about $8,000 more per student than L.A. Unified spends.
The response from Los Angeles was a shrug…
As hopes for EE’s passage faded Tuesday night, an East L.A. grandmother told me she had voted yes, partly because she wants a nurse at her granddaughter’s school more than just once a week.
“This is a crisis,” said Maria Leon.
The principal of Telfair Elementary School in Pacoima,where nearly a quarter of the students were recently classified as homeless, told me he tried his best to counter social media attacks on Measure EE.
“Do I want to see my taxes go up? No,” said Jose Razo. “But I want to invest in the future of our kids, and $220 for me is a small price to pay to make class sizes smaller and bring back the things we so desperately need. I get it. It’s supposed to be the state that takes care of us. But until they get their act together, we have to do what we can for our kids.”
Glenn Sacks, a social studies teacher at James Monroe High School in North Hills, expressed his frustrated CONTINUE READING: Steve Lopez: Why Measure EE Lost and What It Means for the City’s Future—And America’s Future | Diane Ravitch's blog
