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CTA Board member Bob Nichols and State Board of Education President Reed Hastings speak with reporters after a San Jose news conference in support of Prop. 47. |
CTA emerged from the fall elections with its reputation well intact, says CTA President Wayne Johnson. "We were able to do what a lot of people did not think we could."
Wherever CTA decided to place a priority, the effort was successful. Despite a record low turnout, Proposition 47, the $13 billion school bond for K-12 systems and public colleges and universities, passed with nearly 59 percent of the voters saying yes.
Winning such a substantial percentage in an off-year election was proof that teachers still have the touch and that public education has a lot of support. CTA hopes politicians will pay attention to the implied message that they shouldn't mess around with schools.
The percentage of support for Prop. 47 continued to grow as absentee ballots were counted, even though absentee voters tend to be the most conservative, telling CTA analysts that schools have support across the board, regardless of party persuasion.
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Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger thanks CTA President Wayne Johnson for teacher support of Prop. 49 at a news conference in Los Angeles.
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Voters also approved bond issues in 90 local school districts, 86 percent of those that were attempted in November.
State officials promised that $5.6 billion in checks would be mailed out to local school districts within weeks of the election. The State Allocation Board, which is responsible for the distribution of state school construction money, informed school districts that it would "blast through" the bureaucracy to get money to schools whose requests for funding are already in the pipeline as fast as possible.
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CTA President Wayne Johnson talks with CTA/ABC At-Large Member Tony Mendoza and CTA/ABC Chair Don Bridge at the Region 3 Leadership Conference; in the background is CTA Board member Paul Markowitz. |
The $22.4 billion worth of school construction bonds passed on Election Day - the largest amount at any single election in state and national history - will help the economy, says Johnson. Every dollar in bond money will generate three dollars in jobs. "The boost to the economy will be extraordinary."
Even so, the money won't be enough to do the job. Voters will be asked to support a second statewide bond measure worth more than $12 billion in 2004. About 1.2 million students attend overcrowded schools, and school districts will need billions more to completely upgrade campuses and deal with overcrowding.
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Superintendent of Public Instruction-elect Jack O'Connell (left) was one of the speakers at the meeting in Universal City; with him are CTA Secretary-Treasurer David A. Sanchez and CTA Vice President Barbara E. Kerr. |
Other election victories include:
- CTA took positions in favor of four of the seven initiatives on the state ballot and won all of them; it opposed one measure, which went down to defeat. Prop. 49, Arnold Schwarzenegger's after-school program initiative, and Prop. 46, the housing and emergency shelter bond, won by sizeable margins just a couple of points shy of Prop. 47's 59 percent.
- All of the statewide candidates CTA recommended won their races, including Gov. Gray Davis and Superintendent of Public Instruction-elect Jack O'Connell.
- Eighty-six percent of the candidates CTA recommended for state Legislature and congressional races won election - 81 percent of the Assembly races, 94 percent of the Senate races and 94 percent of the U.S. House of Representatives races.
- Fifteen of the 16 new members of the State Assembly are CTA-recommended candidates.
- CTA's political action committee, CTA/ABC, made contributions to 224 local candidate campaigns and won 157 of them. It also made contributions to 54 local issue compaigns and won 40. Altogether it netted a 71 percent success rate in local school elections.
