Month: April 2015

Local School Funding & the Exclusive Electorate

State funding for K-12 public education has been rising, but 70 percent of public school parents say it is “not enough” in our April PPIC Survey. Are California voters likely to heed these parents’ calls and support local ballot measures for school funding?

It doesn’t look likely. To begin with, likely voters are much less likely (54%) than public school parents to say that the state’s funding for their local schools is not enough. More important, in our recent poll likely voters and public school parents have starkly different views about specific ways to increase funding—local bonds and local parcel taxes—for their local public schools. Specifically:

  • When it comes to local school bonds, 75 percent of public school parents would vote yes if their local school district had a bond measure on the ballot to pay for school construction projects. But only 53 percent of likely voters would do so—lower than the 55 percent required to pass a local school bond.
  • As for funding schools through local parcel taxes, 61 percent of public school parents would vote yes. But just 49 percent of likely voters would. A two-thirds majority yes vote is needed to pass a local parcel tax for schools.
  • What about lowering the majority needed to pass local parcel taxes—from two-thirds to 55 percent? This tax reform is rated as a good idea by 57 percent of public school parents. Only 44 percent of likely voters agree—less than the majority required to make this change.

The poll’s findings reflect the fact that California’s “exclusive electorate” controls the fate of ballot measures for local school funding. Today, many public school parents are nonvoters. And most likely voters are not public school parents. According to a PPIC report, likely voters are disproportionately white and tend to be homeowners, older, college graduates, and affluent.

Latinos, renters, and the younger, less educated, and less affluent are strong supporters of local bonds and local parcel taxes for local schools. They also favor lowering the vote threshold for passing local taxes. But these groups are outnumbered among those who cast ballots in elections.

It’s not impossible to pass local bonds and parcel taxes for school funding. CaliforniaCityFinance.com reported last December that eight in 10 local bonds and 6 in 10 local parcel taxes for local public schools have passed since 2001. But funding advocates have to carefully pick and choose the timing and location of these local school funding measures in deference to the higher vote thresholds required and the propensities of California’s exclusive electorate. A PPIC study concludes that the overall fiscal impact of parcel taxes has been fairly limited statewide.

School funding proponents want a state bond measure on the November 2016 ballot. The presidential election will attract the largest and most diverse electorate. It would take a simple majority vote to pass a state school bond. Our poll finds that 55 percent of likely voters and 77 percent of public school parents would vote yes on a state bond for school construction projects.

Meanwhile, the governor has stated that local voters should be deciding if they want more local school funding and that state voters should not be asked to pass state school bonds. This idea of local control resonates with Californians, who generally distrust the decisions made in Sacramento. But as our survey suggests, likely voters are unwilling to lower the local two-thirds threshold for passing local parcel taxes, leaving it easier to pass school funding measures at the state level than at the local one.

In other words, the state is likely to continue to play an oversized role in local school funding—until the California electorate reflects the will of the people who are relying on local public schools to improve their children’s futures.

Video: Water in Silicon Valley

Once a productive farming region, today Silicon Valley is a high-tech hub for the world, and a major driver of the state’s economy. As the valley has transitioned from fruits and nuts to bits and bytes, its water challenges have evolved—along with the approaches to dealing with them.

To explore how the region is coping with the current drought and preparing for future challenges, the PPIC Water Policy Center, with Cal Water and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, hosted an event on April 24 with local leaders and experts. Ellen Hanak, center director, set the stage with an introductory talk on the statewide drought, opportunities for more water conservation in Silicon Valley, and regional climate-related concerns such as floods and sea level rise.

The mayor of San Jose, Sam Liccardo, brought it back to the local perspective. To achieve its 30% conservation target for 2015, he noted that the city of San Jose is taking innovative small and large steps, including a summer jobs program for youth focused on turf removal and the development of city-wide recycled water re-use system. The mayor emphasized that strong leadership at the local and statewide levels is needed to remove barriers to better-integrated and more advanced water management that can sustain the region through the coming challenges.

A panel of experts then offered wide-ranging views on the current drought, and posed a host of common-sense solutions, from increased public education to greater adoption of proven technologies such as using recycled wastewater to recharge groundwater basins. The impact of climate change on water systems, from increased temperatures to a reduced snowpack, was a major topic, with panelists agreeing that we will need to adjust to a new normal.

The participants were Angela Cheung, deputy operating officer of the Santa Clara Valley Water District; Juliet Christian-Smith, climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists; and David Sedlak, co-director of the Berkeley Water Center at UC Berkeley. The panel’s moderator was Paul Rogers, an environment writer with the San Jose Mercury News and managing editor of the KQED Science Unit. As the drought continues, the PPIC Water Policy Center will be partnering with other local organizations and experts to bring similar conversations to other parts of the state.

Video: Californians and K-12 Education

The annual PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Education comes at a time when there are major policy changes underway in the state’s K–12 system. They include implementation of the Local Control Funding Formula, Common Core standards, and the Smarter Balanced standardized tests. The survey was released last week and presented at a briefing in Sacramento by research associate Lunna Lopes.

The survey offers a good look at public reaction to the changes and attitudes toward education more broadly. About three-quarters of adults said they knew nothing about the Local Control Funding Formula, which gives districts more flexibility in spending state funds and gives additional money to districts with more English language learners and lower-income students. When survey respondents were read a description of the funding formula, most favored the idea.

About 58% said they had heard about Common Core, the new set of English and math standards. But only 47% favored the idea and 31% opposed it. The poll also found a high level concern more generally about the quality of K–12 education and funding.

Experts Weigh In on Drought Solutions

Along with their morning coffee, readers of Sunday’s Los Angeles Times were treated to an offering of nine bite-sized opinion pieces on solutions to help California better manage droughts. Contributors included representatives of urban and agricultural water agencies, environmental organizations, the private sector, and research institutions. The topics were equally broad. We both participated in this forum, and our two pieces highlight the importance of strategic investments in a couple of key areas: water storage and water accounting systems.

On storage, the message is that we need to think comprehensively about our water system when deciding how to invest the $2.7 billion in state bonds that voters recently authorized for new projects. People often assume that these funds will go to expanding surface reservoirs and tend to forget that storing water underground in the state’s aquifers is often more cost-effective. An especially promising approach to preparing for future droughts and adapting to our warming climate is to manage our storage network as an integrated system. This means putting more water for dry years into groundwater basins, which can free up space in surface reservoirs for summer irrigation needs and the higher flood flows likely to come with a shrinking snowpack.

On accounting, the message is that California has some serious catching up to do to better understand where, when, and how much water is used in different watersheds. This drought has exposed the tremendous challenges in managing scarce supplies because of an antiquated, incomplete, and inconsistent set of water use and water availability measurements. Updating our water accounting systems is a top priority we identified in a recent check-up on how California is faring during this drought. State officials have begun to take up this challenge. But more work is required to make this information sufficiently transparent, consistent, and integrated across the various state agencies and offices that deal with water management to facilitate allocation decisions that benefit the state’s economy, society, and environment during droughts.

Testimony: Improving the Cal Grant Program

PPIC researchers Hans Johnson and Kevin Cook testified before the California Student Aid Commission last week at a hearing to provide information about improving the Cal Grant program. The program provides about $1.5 billion in grants to college students in California each year and is administered by the commission. The program provides grants to state residents attending approved institutions and is the largest source of state aid to California students. Here is a summary of the testimony.

 

Rapidly increasing costs to students, low completion rates, and lack of access to four-year colleges are key challenges facing the state and the Cal Grant program. Given relatively high rates of poverty among high school graduates, grant and scholarship aid is more important than ever in making college possible for many Californians. Currently, California ranks 47th among all states in the share of high school graduates that go to four-year colleges. Only about half of California State University (CSU) students earn a bachelor’s degree within six years, and less than half of community college students earn an associate degree or vocational certificate or transfer to a four-year college.

To improve outcomes, the California Student Aid Commission should invest in what works, taking into account both efficiency and equity. One possibility would be to provide incentives for completion by providing more funding for students taking a full course load of 15 units. Students who take only 12 units per semester are currently considered full-time students but will not acquire enough units to graduate in four years. Of course, making this change might require increasing the size of grants so that students would be able to cut back on the number of hours they work at jobs.

Student outcomes might also be improved by using Cal Grants to encourage enrollment at four-year colleges. One way to achieve this would be to provide tuition, as well as a living stipend, for students eligible for the University of California and CSU. Currently, some awards for the students with the lowest incomes provide a living stipend for four years but tuition support for only three years.

More and better data is necessary to properly evaluate these and other proposals for improving student outcomes. The best way to identify effective and equitable delivery of Cal Grant aid would be to develop a statewide longitudinal data base that follows students from high school through college and into the workforce. Such a database, already developed in many other states, would allow the commission to answer additional questions that would help them understand what works—and doesn’t—to effectively target grant aid in California.

View the presentation slides

 

Farms that Help Wildlife

When we hear that agriculture accounts for 80% of human uses of water in California, attention often turns to water intensive crops like rice and alfalfa (almonds—a water intensive but high revenue crop—have been much in the news as well). The suggestion is often made that farmers stop growing low revenue crops in order to conserve water. There are many reasons not to dictate what crops to plant. One not often discussed is that some crops that generate low revenues per unit of water may actually have high environmental value, particularly for birds and fish.

California’s freshwater landscape has been transformed, most notably in the Central Valley where less than 5% of native habitat remains. This transformation has reduced the habitat for waterfowl and shorebirds in the region. Land conversion, in conjunction with water resource development, is also the principal cause of the decline of native fishes such as salmon and steelhead.

Yet the very agricultural fields that contributed to the decline of these species may today provide the opportunity to ensure their future.

It turns out that some agricultural fields offer good habitat for both birds and fish. Farmers who flood their rice fields in the winter to help break down rice straw provide valuable wetland habitat for waterfowl and shorebirds that migrate to the Central Valley during the winter. Decades of research have helped develop practices that benefit both farmers and birds.

Researchers at UC Davis and the nonprofit California Trout have recently shown that these same rice fields can be used to rear juvenile salmon, mimicking the habitat that floodplains provided in the past. Thanks to unlimited food availability, juveniles in rice fields grow at three times the rate of those confined to river channels. They can also find their way back to rivers if given the opportunity. Their larger size increases the likelihood of survival as they pass through the Delta and head to sea.

Even alfalfa—much maligned for its high water use and low revenues—has habitat value. Swainson’s hawks—listed as threatened under the state endangered species act—and long-billed curlews make extensive use of alfalfa fields because these fields house their favorite insect and rodent prey. Alfalfa also provides nesting and foraging habitat for many other birds and has been reported to support some of the highest biodiversity among row crops.

There are many other examples of farmers providing valuable habitat for birds and fish. With modest changes in farming practices they can increase the quality and extent of this habitat. This prospect lies at the root of efforts made by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Central Valley Joint Venture, and TNC Birdreturns, which help farmers improve the value of habitat on working lands. And projects like the Central Valley Habitat Exchange are providing incentives to farmers to set aside lands for wildlife habitat.

Increasing water scarcity and high commodity prices are creating pressure to shift to crops that generate higher revenue per unit of water used—most notably perennial crops like nuts, fruits, and grapes, which generally don’t provide good habitat. This pressure is likely to have the unwanted consequence of reducing the extent and quality of wildlife and fish habitat. Financial and other incentives may be needed to encourage farmers to plant annual crops that have environmental benefits—even if those crops are low revenue and water intensive.

Video: The Future of Local Taxes

The parcel tax is unique to California, said economist Jon Sonstelie, because it is a revenue alternative that navigates the constraints of Proposition 13. Sonstelie, PPIC Bren Fellow and a professor at UC Santa Barbara, evaluated the tax in his new report Parcel Taxes as a Local Revenue Source in California and presented the results last week in Sacramento. He noted that between 2003 and 2012, cities, school districts, and local districts put 691 parcel tax proposals to fund services on the ballot, and 53 percent received the two-thirds vote required for passage. Most of these taxes were relatively small. The median was $60 for cities, $96 for school districts, and $68 for special districts.

Following the presentation, a panel discussed the future of local taxes in an era of increasing local authority. Patrick Murphy, PPIC research director, moderated the discussion. Participants included Michael Coleman, principal fiscal advisor to the League of California Cities; Robert Gutierrez, director of the California Tax Foundation; and Marianne O’Malley, managing principal analyst on state and local finance at the Legislative Analyst’s Office

Video: Online Testing and Learning in California Schools

California is rolling out a new online testing system in K–12 schools this year in conjunction with the new Common Core curriculum standards. Are schools prepared?

At a recent briefing in Sacramento, PPIC researcher Niu Gao answered the question with findings from her new study. She found that there is a wide variation in readiness across the state. Many district technology officers express confidence in the quantity and quality of their hardware and network capabilities. But they are much less confident of their ability to handle software issues, such as the installation of secure browsers, distribution of IDs, and quick log-ins for students. Most districts also report that they do not have enough staff to provide technical support or do not provide sufficient training for teachers and IT staff.

Gao concludes that in the longer term, virtually all schools will need to upgrade their technology to adopt and fully benefit from digital learning—video conferencing, virtual field trips, and personalized audio-visual instruction.

Gao’s report is titled Are California’s Schools Ready for Online Testing and Learning?

Managing Tough Trade-offs in the Delta

One key source of conflict over the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta is the competition over who gets to use the water. During droughts, this competition becomes acute, especially when it comes to decisions about how much water flows out to sea versus how much gets exported to cities and farms in the San Joaquin Valley, Southern California, and the Bay Area. New data from the 2014 water year illustrate the tough trade-offs California faces.

Those seeking more exports sometimes perceive the water flowing out of the Delta as “wasted to the sea.” But it is important to remember that these outflows, which are counted as water for the environment, serve two distinct purposes:

1) By pushing back seawater, outflows keep Delta water fresh enough for urban and farm uses.
2) Outflows also support habitat for endangered fish species.

Although the flows in the first category often help fish and wildlife as well, they would be needed to maintain water quality for people even if there were no fish or wildlife to worry about.

We estimate that 11.5 million acre-feet (maf) of surface flows were available within the Delta’s watershed in 2014—it was one of the drier years on record. This total included 9.5 maf from winter and spring rains plus 2 maf that had been stored in reservoirs from previous years. These low flows translated to greatly reduced use of surface water. Cities and farms that divert water upstream of the Delta, along with Delta farmers, used 5.4 maf—well below average. Just 1.9 maf of Delta water was exported, the lowest volume in decades. Water users made up for much of this shortfall by pumping extra groundwater.

Roughly 4.2 maf flowed to the sea last year—a near-record low, but still large relative to Delta exports. The State Water Resources Control Board estimates that the most of this outflow—3 maf, or 71%—was needed to keep Delta water fresh enough for human uses (see figure). In addition, 450,000 acre-feet of water (11%) generated by three storms could have been exported, but Delta export pumps lacked the physical capacity to capture the water.

Meanwhile, the additional 750,000 acre-feet of water that was required for fish habitat—which causes the most heated debate—was just 18 percent of total outflows (and 7% of all surface water in the watershed). Under current regulatory rules, that amount would have been higher, but the water board lowered the requirement by 400,000 acre-feet to ease hardship among people dependent on Delta exports.

Given tight water supplies, there’s little doubt that this additional water flowing from the Delta could have been used for other purposes. But some of the fish species that depend on the Delta are struggling mightily during this drought. Reallocating more water to other uses almost certainly would have caused further environmental harm, and increased the chances of stricter future regulations to protect endangered fish.

The relatively large amount of water flowing out of the Delta to manage its salinity sheds light on new approaches being taken as we enter a fourth dry year. Governor Brown’s latest executive order calls for the erection of “salinity barriers” in the western Delta. These barriers will make it possible to keep the interior Delta water fresh enough to export to farms and cities, with less flowing to the sea. The water savings could also benefit some salmon runs, because more cold water could be saved upstream for release later in the year.

But this approach will also involve new trade-offs, because reductions in Delta outflows are likely to harm delta smelt as well as salmon migrating through the Delta. This is yet another example of the tough decisions water managers are having to make during these exceptionally dry times.

FIGURE SOURCE: State Water Resources Control Board, 2015.