are these members all Liberals? Just like the new mayor he thinks he is Jerry Brown.They just want to raise the tax on everyone. Enough with all the spending. I dont have kids in these schools. Mt. View use to be a real nice little city. And all the Liberals have ruined it.

What's ruined our schools started under Reagan, ketchup is a vegetable and has continued thru Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and the unpaid for wars. Billionaires are getting millions in tax cuts.
A quick civics lesson. Congress is in charge of the budget, on the federal level which has been in the hands of republicans for the last 7 years. California only gets back 72 cents for each dollar we pay in taxes. Many red states are the beneficiaries of Ca's taxes. This is being done deliberately.
Here's what I'm sick of:
Tea partiers/GOP with no knowledge of recent history, no knowledge of how government works, for being willing to pay 50 billion for a wall that will take 21,000 people to maintain, for thinking private prisons are effective, for thinking isolation will make us safe, for not believing in the constitution starting with "we the people..." for giving lip service to "liberty and justice for all..." for supporting GOP leaders who are hell bent on taking away, social security, medicare, and the Affordable Care Act, for believing we can destroy the earth, for refusing to admit racism, sexism, and homophobia are very real. And MOST of all not realizing the importance of public education, we are a lot safer with an educated populace, which has kept our democracy is strong. Dumbing down of America is the reason we are in the shape we are today. Maybe anyway with a secretary of education who wants to talk more money away from public education.

What Jim needs to do is look at what he gets back in services, tangible and intangible and I'm willing to bet he gets more than he pays in.

I honestly don't understand why we continue to throw money into a school system that has failed our kids in this state. We need a complete overhaul. The teachers union has too much power and they are so reluctant to make the necessary changes, The administration is way to top heavy. The political power in this state knows where the votes come from and where their bread is buttered.

The tax structure proposed is Regressive, while before it was Progressive. The same amount of revenue would be raised, as before. The old district legal counsel had a different view than the new counsel from DWK does. The new guy helped write Berkeley’s new per-square-foot tax, and if it was challenged, he would be ready to defend per-square-foot in court.

ABE: Alameda, Berkeley and Emeryville now have per-square-foot progressive school taxes. Emeryville’s was not challenged (2014). And I just learned today from BUSD that their tax from November has not been challanged either (the email was forwarded to the Voice, in case they want to later quote parts of it).

All those taxes are uniform, per-square-foot on residential and commercial properties. They confirm precisely to the 2012 court decision, which was originally filed against Alameda.

I'm on the fence about this. In theory I support public education, but I agree that the system is broken. Specifically here in Mountain View I've seen a lot of money wasted on administration and bad decisions (TTO, waiting years to spend Measure G funds, just to name a few.) I don't have faith this money will be spent well. I don't have kids in the district, so I'm not really convinced my additional money is well spent there (some of my money already goes there, even though I send them no kids to educate.)

I might be better off paying no additional taxes and donating my money to a non-profit that has been effective at helping children in need.

Enough of raising taxes! I do not support this measure. Everytime that the city wants more money, they go for the homeowners. Many are exhausted to the limits and it is not OK to keep on raising taxes. Our schools can improve with quality teaching and dedicated staff, giving them more money will not improve education. Enough is enough, stop raising taxes.

In China Non-citizens cannot attend public schools. Their parents must send children to private school and pay out of their own pocket. If the same were true in California then taxes could be cut not raised!

I want to get my "no" vote(s) in ASAP.

It's too funny listening to people paying some of the lowest effective property tax rates in the country on their multimillion dollar homes complaining about property tax. I'm tired of homeowners not paying their fair share here to keep our schools up to snuff. Instead we hear evidence-free rants about undocumented immigrants. Repeal Prop 13, then you can complain about your schools not being good enough. Until then, it's the natural outcome.

Can there be one thread where someone doesn't mention Prop 13? People, it's there for a reason! Property taxes are so high!!!! Let your 98 year old neighbor have low taxes (still probably 5k/year) pay her bills before she dies. Prop 13 was passed long ago for a reason.

That being said: our schools need more than money. They need a complete overhaul and $100/house isn't going to fix anything.

~a homeowner paying $12k/year on my $1m home, not working in tech, not crying about it, and trying to make ends meet

If you're paying $12000 / year on a $1M home, you must have bought it at basically that price. So now you're trying to make ends meet, after you purchased a $1M item, then complaining about how high the property taxes are. Even when CA as a state is in at least the bottom half of property tax rates.

If your neighbors were paying their fair share, your schools wouldn't be terrible and the city wouldn't be asking you for another parcel tax. Repeal Prop 13 so everyone pays their fair share.

I have not invertigated this with every state, but with the few other states I'm familiar with, we pay WAY more property taxes than those other states. My family and friends in those states laugh their you-know-what's off when they hear what we pay. We pay $11,000 this year, and we bought over 10 years ago. And it keeps increasing by a fair amount every year. Im not even sure if we'll be able to retire here because who could keep up with those tax increases? I'm sure a large percent of that money goes to schools we don't even use. Enough already.

Nope, not complaining about how high property taxes are. Complaining that schools think slightly more money will be a magical fix when it isn't. And that people take every opportunity to complain about prop 13 they can.

Schools need more than money- I've had kids in different districts and I've seen the different ways of bridging gaps, different principals, talents, respect, etc etc and it's just not something $191 can fix.

Example #1: we could give MVWSD $500k and it could use it on a horrible math program without obtaining permission to go into contract, teacher insight, or sufficient research, OR the district could use it for copious amounts of teacher training. I think the latter is better but history tells me the former is what will happen (again). It's kind of like telling my 9 year old I don't trust her with $500,000 so I'm not going to raise her allowance. No more taxes.

@What?
our property taxes are going up because the value of your house is going up. That does not mean that your property tax rates are increasing. The thing you own is worth more, that's how property taxes work.

What's the current market value of your house?

@Monta Loma,

Pardon me for interpreting "Property taxes are so high!!!!" as complaining about how high property taxes are...

We spend less per pupil on education than almost any other state, we're underfunding our schools because of Prop 13, yet people are complaining that we're spending too much money.

It all just shows how Mountain View is still just a blue collar town they way some blue collar homeowners are so cheap, but perhaps justifiably so given they are being priced out of the town. And then there is the nouveau riche who come here and buy overpriced homes and then don't want to pay any more for schools. Something tells me the think their homes should have just been given to them once the blue collar homeowners have been kicked out. In the meantime they just jump up and down all red in the face until they get their way.

Seriously people, better performing schools make a better neighborhood for everyone. And the schools face the same problems as the blue collar folks and the nouveau riche--competition for resources. We should all be paying closer to $600 per home as they do in Los Altos, some of the best schools in the state with property values to prove it. Rising property values benefit everyone in the long run, both the blue collar homeowners and the nouveau riche homeowners.

Kids look like they can talk, listen, and look both ways before crossing the street (for the most part).

They don't need more money thrown at their education.

More money will "mostly" go to enriching top-level administrators.

Look what happened to Zuckerberg's New Jersey donations. Pure waste.

Don't do it. The kids will be fine.

More money would just go to leadership already sucking off more than their fair share.

Little as I like the way our elected school board has managed things the past few years, and little as I like this recent middle school math fiasco, I will absolutely support the increase.

It is in my self-interest as a homeowner to have great schools, aside from the social good of public schools which seems so obvious that I won't bother explaining it. Why do you think a house in Greenmeadow that is very similar to mine costs $1M more? It's because their schools are stellar and ours need some love. It's in every homeowner's best interest to vote yes whether you have kids or not (I don't).

Off tangent- Actually, Palo Alto schools are far from stellar. And any home in Monta Loma will sell for $1.5M and homes in Greenmeadow aren't going for $2.5M (sorry- real estate obsession here).

It's better to compare our good schools (Bubb) and the poor schools (Castro) and surrounding property values.

$191 per home isn't fixing Ayinde Rudolph's constant mistakes and poor planning, but Palo Alto schools and property values are also sinking. It's Los Altos we all need to be looking to. Both are skyrocketing.

Public Employee Wages, Benefits and Pension Reforms – Public sector compensation costs for California, at both the state and local levels, are now clearly unsustainable. According to the Department of Labor, California state and local employees are the highest compensated in all 50 states. Pay, benefits and pensions of public employees have become disproportionate to their private sector counterparts who foot the bill. Adding to the approaching calamity is mismanagement – which has included criminal bribery – at CalPERS, the state’s largest public employee pension fund. Politically motivated investment strategies and fanciful predictions of return on those investments have left taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded liability for current and future retirees. Consideration must be given to shuttering CalPERS and fairly allocating to each current employee their share of the retirement funds, arranging for the public employer to make up the difference for what has been promised to date, and move from “defined benefit” to “defined contribution” plans for all existing and future employees. Otherwise, this pension burden has the potential to grow so large that California will not be able to fund the most basic services and as residents flee to other states, the last one out will be asked to turn out the lights.

Web Link

Houses sold in Greenmeadow recently range from 2.3 to 3.1 M. Here's one in the middle at 2.6 which supports what I'm saying. Palo Alto schools are absolutely better and if Mountain View's were that good our home values would rise accordingly. It's worth investing in strong schools.

The district now gets the maximum a school district can get in funding because home values are so high. At the same time they are asking for money and they have not shared a final plan for redistricting. Why not share plans for redistricting before asking for more from the community?

@Home Values - thanks for the Redfin link. So Apples to Apples? A bit hard to do, varieties are different. But using your data source - I did a Per-Sq-Ft comparison. I searched for Mountain View 94043 and picked Monta Loma School as the area.

Your search from your data source:

Greenbriar area in PA $1,156 average per-sq-ft
Monta Loma area in MV $1,407 average per-square-ft (my search - your data source)

Now, I don't necessarily say that this would hold, if you sat - only kept single family homes with 3 or 4 bedrooms build at least 30 years ago and on 1/10 to 1/5 AC. But ....

Using the CA Dept of Education statistical department's data on API scores over all the thousand of CA schools, over more than a decade, the "correlation coefficient" that they discovered works best to model API, was parent's educational attainment. 80% or so - consistently No viable mico-economics meta research studies I have ever seen - say anything different.

pardon 'my editor' Greenmeadow not Greenbriar

Mountain View Resident of Shoreline West

"... At the same time they are asking for money and they have not shared a final plan for redistricting. Why not share plans for redistricting before asking for more from the community?"

Two different and UN-related questions, with two very different answers.
The timing of each issue was determined by dates set years in the past.
The existing parcel tax and Measure G.

The reason why the district is asking for a REPLACEMENT for the CURRENT long-standing parcel tax NOW is that it is about to EXPIRE and this is the last date when it can be approved without a serious gap in CURRENT funding levels. The schools could lose millions if the replacement parcel tax fails.

The reason why the district has not yet announced the future school boundaries for the neighborhood schools is that the process of coming up with new boundaries could only BEGIN AFTER the district figured out how to pay for and build a new Slater school for the Whisman/Slater area. Until the district KNEW that a new Slater was going to be built, it was impossible and pointless to begin the lengthy process of figuring out what new boundaries make sense.

The process of coming up with new boundaries is still in the works and a good many people are working very hard on this difficult task. And regardless of what ideas the SAATF comes up with, the final decision is up to the Board of Trustees to approve or reject and ask for more study.

Maybe we don't technically need a new set of boundaries decided and approved right away since the new Slater school wont be ready until the 2019 school year, however, the more notice parents get, the better and the more time the district has to prepare for the changes the better. The new boundaries will have a whole bunch of ripple-effects and time will be required to work on those issues too.

So, yes, there is real time-pressure on neighborhood school boundaries, however, there is a hard deadline coming up THIS July on the parcel tax replacement to avoid the loss of millions in general operating budget for the schools.

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?