Measure L: Klein Waugh School District Wants to Implement $89 Property Tax

Mike Gardner, superintendent of the Waugh School District, says his teachers could use a raise: “Those of us who understand how high the cost of living has really gotten know that the costs have outpaced the cost of living adjustment,” he says.

That adjustment amounted to a meager 1% for the current school year for the district’s 40 certified employees — mostly classroom teachers, but also speech therapists and others — making them among the lowest-paid teachers in Sonoma County.

Additionally, the two-school district, which serves 785 students and overlaps with northeast Petaluma and unincorporated county land, is the lowest-funded per-pupil district in the entire county, according to data released by the district.

Meet Measure L, a property tax measure set to hit the ballot on Nov. 5. This measure would impose an additional $89 per year on each property, including commercial properties, within the district for the next four years.

If the measure passes, the roughly $545,000 a year it raises would go directly to the district’s general fund, allowing teachers to maintain the smaller class sizes and personalized education that have helped Waugh become one of the region’s top-rated districts, officials said.

“Our budget is quite tight in the Waugh district,” said Lenée Howe, a fifth-grade teacher at Meadow Elementary School and union representative for the Waugh Teachers Association.

Measure L, Howe said, is “a way for us to have some more financial flexibility with programs, salaries and class sizes. So it really allows us to uphold the Waugh values.

“We are really focused on making sure that no child slips through the cracks. We do a lot of interventions with children, teaching in small groups, which requires more people.”

As a parcel tax measure, Measure L requires a two-thirds majority of voters to pass. That poses a major hurdle, because even broadly popular measures don’t always meet that threshold.

For example, Petaluma City Schools placed similar $89 parcel tax measures on the March ballot, one for the elementary school district and another for the high school district. While the elementary school measure passed, the other failed, even with over 63% approval.

“It’s going to be exciting,” Gardner said of the upcoming vote. “A two-thirds supermajority is definitely a high bar. But we’re hoping that through transparent communication and also the special relationship that these schools have with this community, it will be successful.”

He also noted that “to our knowledge this is the first time Waugh County has applied for a parcel tax measure to support the general fund.”

Only voters who live within the district’s boundaries, which stretch from McDowell Boulevard to the countryside beyond Old Adobe Road and from the southern edge of Penngrove to Sonoma Mountain Road, will see Measure L on their ballots. Next to Meadow is Waugh’s other campus, Corona Creek Elementary School.

If passed, school district residents 65 and older would be eligible for exemptions from paying the tax by filling out a form at the district office. As for others who live in the district and don’t have children — or who otherwise don’t see the value in supporting Waugh — both Gardner and Howe noted that having high-performing schools tends to increase property values.

“I encourage them to come and get to know us,” Gardner said. “And to see the great work our staff does every day for kids. … Educating kids is a community-wide responsibility, and the outcome is a community-wide good.”

According to Howe, Waugh students benefit from help from teaching assistants – at least “an hour a day” for each teacher.

Both schools in Waugh were awarded Distinguished School status by the state last year, despite receiving less than half the per-pupil funding of the county’s best-funded school district.

The Waugh School District makes a detailed case for the parcel tax on its website. Go to waughsd.org to see it.

“The financial disparity between Waugh and other school districts has made it challenging to maintain competitive salaries and benefits for employees, as well as to fund other operating costs,” district leaders say on the site.

And now that COVID-related funding is running out, they’re hoping Measure L funds will make up the difference. Without them, “we’d ​​be facing some tough decisions,” Gardner said.

“A budget is 70-80 percent salaries,” Howe said. “So if that budget is deficit spending, the obvious thing to do is cut salaries. That means our class sizes are going to get bigger. We’re going to have fewer teachers. … Those programs that are close to the kids, that we’ve kept, those are the things that are starting to disappear.”

Don Frances is the editor of the Petaluma Argus-Courier. Reach him at [email protected].