top of page

If you're returning to this site after a previous visit, be sure to refresh the page for latest content!

Based on nearly complete Election Office processing of the Measure E and Measure F Ballots, both measures have been defeated.  Both required a two-thirds affirmative vote (a requirement for property-related taxes that goes back to 1800s California property-owners' justifiable fears of being overloaded with taxes promoted by those who would not have to pay them).  

Measures E and F failed, despite the fact that SRVUSD got the low-turnout election it sought by arranging for a costly special election, just two months after March's Presidential Primary election (with which the SRVUSD E & F schemes could have been consolidated). Voter turnout was only 26%. 

Both Measures required the two-thirds vote (66.6666...%) mentioned above.  Measure E had a little under 63%, Measure F slightly than 58%.

SRVUSD itself sent several promotional fliers to registered voters, as "community education" materials.  The cost to taxpayers of those and professional advisor fees was something close to $200,000.  

​

Once the tax schemes were adopted (thence to become Measures E and F), a professionally directed  "public" campaign eventually costing over $100,000 swung seamlessly into action (with about half of that funding -- at least $54,638 provided by tax-exempt PTAs and individual school foundations).  

 

Among other problems, this latter "SRV Citizens for Quality Schools" campaign claimed deceitfully that 
"Measure E would renew an expiring local funding source at the current rate."  No, Measure E tried in fact to sneak in an annual inflation escalator clause.  There's much more that has been exposed in these pages. 
 

Previous special-election parcel-taxes were passed in 2004 (after failing in 2003's regular election), 2009 (after failing in 2008's Presidential Election), and 2015.   Hopefully, increasing numbers of voters are paying attention to the issues, including those shown below.  

Thanks and applause to the East Bay Times for its excellent April 24th editorial opposing SRVUSD's sneaky Measures E and  F.   The editorial exposes major fault lines in these two measures.

"San Ramon Valley voters should reject school tax proposals," says the Times headline;  "Special  May 7 election for Measures E and F will depress turnout while deceitful ballot language hides true impact."

​

The editorial includes these major findings:  

​

  • ​Calling a special election (on May 7 instead of the March Primary or November General Election) "suppresses voter turnout.... [V]oters deserve full transparency, and the district should not put its thumb on the scales by calling for a special, low-turnout election." 

    Our own comment:  that behavior allows SRVUSD more easily to target its known yes-on-taxes voters, with both tax-funded promotions and mailing funded by tax-exempt PTAs, school foundations, and vendors of goods and services to the district.

​

  • "Measure E would extend the district's existing $144 parcel tax... and would add, for the first time, annual inflation increases to it.  In other words, this is not the same as the prior tax.  Calling it a renewal is deceitful.... It's the sort of wording that only a political consultant could love."
     

  • "Measure F would add a completely new tax... of $98 per parcel."  And collections of SRVUSD's new $98 parcel tax would begin on July 1 of this year, not waiting for the existing $144 to expire.  
     

  • Both Measure E and Measure F are piled atop existing property taxes being collected to retire school-construction bonds.  For 2025, these "are projected to be $68.24 for every $100,000 of assessed value.... For a district-average assessed value of $1.2 million, the annual bond payments work out to about $819" already being paid.
     

  • "Voters should reject Measures E and F," concludes the Times editorial. There are numerous other reasons for that rejection.  Keep reading; we hope you'll vote NO on these deceptive measures.  

Thanks as well to the Danville San Ramon online news and Publisher Gina Channell Wilcox's blog, in which she opposes Measures E and F from her perspective as a taxpayer and SRVUSD graduate's parent.

 

Gina's April 28 posting also points to Measure E's sneaky inflation escalator, observing that "Since it will no longer be $144-per-parcel eight of the nine years it will be in effect, calling it a renewal is disingenuous."  She also faults the "systemic, consistent lack of transparency from SRVUSD," and "Spending $1.4 million for a special election."  

Below are SRVUSD's ballot "labels" for Measures E and F.   SRVUSD does a sales job even in those; their claims and omissions are answered / filled in with responsive ballot arguments and in part further below. 

Note the phrase “with annual adjustments.” That turns out in the fine print to mean a particular CPI inflation index utilized by the Federal Government for this East Bay area. (The “fine print” is the January 30th SRVUSD Board-adopted resolution which specified Measure E’s 75-word Measure E “ballot label” above — what voters will see on their ballots in the mail for the May 7 special election.) 

SRVUSD’s tax promoters don’t make this inflationary index clear; in fact, they ignore it in their ballot arguments.  This index, like others, doubled during some nine-year periods in the 1970s into the 1980s....  It could happen again.  SRVUSD owes voters the truth.

SRVUSD appears determined to minimize attention to its built-in Measure E inflation scheme.  It would change the $144 base parcel tax by whatever its chosen inflation index indicates, over Measure E's nine-year run. 

The District owes its voters / taxpayers greater transparency with its inflationary scheme.  But their tax-promoter ballot arguments make no mention of it.

Voters should oppose SRVUSD's Measures E & F on the May 7th Special Election mail-in ballot for three primary reasons:  (1)  The District's salary & benefit spending far exceeds the effect of inflation and enrollment growth (now decline) combined since 2015, when the  $144 parcel tax was last renewed; (2) District tax promoters are hiding a CPI price escalator in Measure E's nominal "$144 renewal"; and (3) SRVUSD is misleading the public on State test scores, comparing 2023 results only to 2022's already poor performance, not 2015-2019's.  

Notice above:  just since 2015 — when SRVUSD last renewed its parcel tax — the District is now $127 Million to $158 Million ahead (depending on whether 2014-15 or 2015-16 is considered the base comparison year) of the combined effects of inflation and enrollment growth (now enrollment decline), by 3,000 students since 2015.

​

SRVUSD does not need, and does not deserve, Measures E ($6.8 Million + inflationary increase annually) or Measure F ($4.6 Million annually).  They're spending $16,000 per student annually) now —  the equivalent of $400,000, in General Fund operational dollars alone, for a classroom roster of 25 students.  The teacher sees roughly $120,000 in salary and benefits on average, for 186 employment days per year (vs. 240 work days for most workers) .  Where and how does the rest get consumed?  In any case:  SRVUSD has generated its own inflationary spiral.

​

In other words:  in nine years of deceptive Measure E and its companion Measure F scheme, your money would be gone with the wind.  SRVUSD will still be wasting it on harmful curricula.  

The two parcel-tax measures ( E and F) have been placed by SRVUSD's tax promoters on a May 7 special, vote-by-mail-only ballot.  That special placement alone, two months after the March 5th Presidential Primary Election, is costing District taxpayers approximately $1 Million more than if SRVUSD had merely consolidated its election with the rest of the March 5 ballot.  But the special election rigging permits the District to target its known and anticipated yes-on-taxes voters, while hoping others don't vote.  

As you will see in the ballot arguments, the tax spenders-promoters are pretending that Measure E is just a renewal of the existing $144 parcel tax.  It's not; Measure E adds a CPI escalator clause that allows the $144 to increase every year during the 9-year run of Measure E.  The index utilized for the sneaky CPI inflationary add-on is revealed in the fine print of its underlying resolution, as adopted by the SRVUSD
Board of Education on January 30th, at page 3.  More money won't help SRVUSD.   

That index is the Federal Government's "Consumer Price Index-All Urban Consumers, San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA area  over the prior twelve months, as of April 1 of each year as published by the U.S. Bureau of  Labor Statistics."   SRVUSD over-spending itself has an inflationary effect of its own!

Note there that you can select which years are to be shown, all the way back to 1914, and you can add a graph.  Note also the doubling of inflation rates which occurred over some 9-year periods in the 1970s into the 1980s.  Measure E, itself a 9-year tax, could exhibit the same unpredictable, sky-high increases now.  The tax promoters hope you don't notice; their ballot "label" — what voters actually see on the ballot — refers only to "annual adjustments."  

                         

The Measure F arguments illustrate the long list of SRVUSD's academic and behavioral scandals.  

​

 SRVUSD'S alleged “Quality Schools” have:
 

 

 

  • Adopted a “textbook” which capitalizes all racial designations except white, by author
    who claims “Being racist against white people is not a thing,” thereby rationalizing her
    own “prejudice against white people.”      Another text advises 7th graders to check out
    [vile, misogynistic]     “Straight Outta Compton” for “change and empowerment.”

 

 

  • Confused vulnerably impressionable, very young children with inapposite or ungrammatical
    pronouns and LGBTQ-themed, read-aloud fictional story books, in a process which staff personnel have called     “queering the classroom.”  

 

  • Implemented “Gender Support Plans,” hidden from even loving, attentive parents, unless
    suddenly gender-confused children (even the youngest) permit disclosure.

 

 

 

Taxpayers should demand new SRVUSD leadership, curricular sanity, and genuine “Quality Schools."
Meanwhile, taxpayers should flunk Measures E and F. 

                

Meanwhile: Nicholas Moseby's arrest and long-delayed trial is one of the two most recent cases of alleged sexual abuse of students by SRVUSD personnel.  Originally arrested in September of 2022, Moseby was due finally to be tried in November, 2023.  But that trial was moved to March of this year.  Now it's been moved again, to June, conveniently AFTER  SRVUSD's May 7th parcel-tax special election.  

One naturally wonders:  was SRVUSD able to exert political influence behind the scenes to get the trial date changed in order to avoid adverse publicity, just weeks before the District's dual parcel-tax measures are on the May 7 ballot?   Due diligence by SRVUSD should have prevented Moseby's hiring in the first place.  But this is a school district which casually places pornography before its students, in libraries and classrooms.

Another part of this scandal was SRVUSD's loss of complaint records at SRV HS, before Moseby was then moved to Diablo Vista Middle School — where worse offenses became part of the record.  And Moseby's arrest was preceded by the August 2022 arrest of Andrew Oliver Kallick, reportedly a noon duty monitor at John Baldwin Elementary School.

bottom of page