Parent Supporter of MDUSD’s Measure C: District Leaders and the Contra Costa Times Should Stop Squabbling and Move Forward to Make Schools Better

Kish Rajan, a Walnut Creek City Councilman and parent volunteer with the Citizens United for Excellent Schools (CUES) Committee, acknowledges that the Measure C bond measure was not the perfect instrument for raising money to help the Mt. Diablo Unified School District's cash-strapped schools. 

He also understands why a segment of the district's voters have lost confidence in the district's leadership. 

However, in the end, 61 percent of voters who cast ballots approved Measure C because they wanted to help students in the district in anyway possible, Rajan said in an interview Saturday.

In the interview, he took  issue with suggestions, by the Contra Costa Times or by  anyone else within the MDUSD leadership, to invalidate the election because it was somehow illegal or because voters were not informed about the benefits and cost consequences of approving the measure. 

Voters knew what they were dealing with, Rajan said. They knew this was the best option being presented to them in a challenging  time, and they spoke at the ballot box about what they wanted, he said.

Measure C asked voters to allow the district to borrow and spend $348 million to upgrade school buildings, improve campus and classroom technology, and install solar energy at the district's campuses. 

The CUES group, reviewing the district's options at the beginning of 2010, understood the advantages of a parcel tax, Rajan said. Unlike a bond measure, which is limited to facility improvements, a parcel tax would allow the district to raise money that would go directly to teachers and classroom programs.

But a parcel tax requires two-thirds approval from voters, and a parcel tax measure had lost in an election the previous spring. Another parcel tax, the CUES group concluded, probably would not pass. A bond measure, which requires approval  55 percent, had a much better shot.

Rajan said that a poll, now the subject of Times scrutiny and commissioned by the parent committee, showed public support for a bond measure. 

 "Both the Times and the MDUSD Board should get past their squabbling over election minutia and actually listen to what the public said with their approval of Measure C," he said. In his view, the voters were saying, "our kids are in trouble" and "we need to do something."

He adds: "Voters probably knew that the measure was not the greatest thing in politics, but I believe, 100 percent, that voters knew what they voting for." 

In an editorial published Friday, the Times said that voters were told that the annual cost for this bond issue and a prior one would not exceed $60 per $100,000 assessed valuation, or $300 a year for a $500,000 home.

The Times asserts that voters were not told that repayment of the new bonds would be stretched out over more than 40 years and that the interest would be "astronomical"—with repayments of both principal and interest amounting to up to $1.8 billion, or 5.4 times the amount borrowed.

[It is true, that the text of Measure C, prepared by the district for the voter information guide, did not mention potential long-term costs.  

However, a review of voter information prepared by other local public agencies seeking revenue through bond measures over the past few years—West Contra Costa Unified School District's Measure D facilities measure in 2008 and Orinda's $59 million Measure Q in 2006 for street repair—also did not provide long-term repayment estimates. Opponents in both those elections provided such information. 

No arguments were filed in opposition to Mt. Diablo Unified's Measure C.] 

Rajan understands the point that the district didn't do the best job analyzing the long-term cost implications of Measure C.

"But that does not invalidate the election," he said, repeating the point that "voters were fully informed, and they made a judgment that it was better to go forward than not."

As for the argument, posed by the Times, that the CUES poll should have been released to the public prior to the election, Rajan said the poll was not commissioned by the district but by the private parents group.

In a column in Sunday's Times, Political Editor Lisa Vorderbrueggen agrees that campaigns are under no legal obligation to share their poll numbers. 

Campaigns keep their polls private because they can offer a window to a campaign's strategy, she said: "No campaign wants to open its playbook."

However, public agencies, unlike single candidates, should operate by a higher standard of public disclosure, Vorderbrueggen said. "They represent all their constituents, and not just the interests of a private group or a single candidate."

Rajan sees no reason to not release the poll now that the campaign is over. He also says, going forward, the MDUSD leadership should heed some of the Times concerns about the district's underlying problems--and use the $348 million granted to them by voters wisely and with transparency. He agrees that the district could institute better ways of communicating.

"Now that Measure C has passed, I believe that parents can help by building more effective channels of communication that will enable more consistent and constructive dialogue with the parent community," he said.