Sonoma Valley Voters Extremely Concerned About Impact of State Budget Cuts on Local Schools – 2/3s would Support additional funding to improve schools
SONOMA, CA – June 15, 2010
Sonoma Valley voters are extremely concerned about the impact of State budget cuts on local schools according to a recent survey conducted by FM3 Research, specialists in public education and school issues. 66% of voters stated that they would support a potential Proposition 39 GO Bond Measure (requiring 55% to pass) to improve student achievement, college/job preparation and help prevent budget cuts by making schools more energy efficient, saving millions that could be spent in classrooms. This bond would be structured so existing tax rates would not be increased.
“The community understands that we cannot rely on Sacramento to protect and maintain the quality of education in our local schools,” stated Superintendent Louann Carlomagno. “With the Sacramento budget mess threatening nearly $2.5 billion in education cuts state-wide,” Carlomagno continued, “we need to protect quality education in Sonoma Valley.”
Based on interviews with 400 randomly-selected residents across the community, the survey found that over 70% of voters consider preserving school library hours, maintaining music and art classes, keeping class sizes low, upgrading technology in classrooms, libraries, computer and science labs, and modernizing career and technical education training to be extremely/very important. Over 9 out of 10 of respondents believe it is extremely/very important to ‘retain and attract quality teachers.’
“Improving energy efficiency by installing solar panels and other energy efficient upgrades will save our schools over one million dollars a year,” stated Deputy Superintendent Justin Frese. “The dollars saved can then be used to protect small class sizes and core instructional programs from devastating budget cuts.”
Over the coming weeks, Sonoma Valley Unified School District will conduct additional community outreach to answer questions and keep stakeholders and the community informed as they prepare a fiscally responsible proposal for consideration. A potential November 2010 measure is seriously being considered. “Any plan we propose will include independent fiscal audits, citizens’ oversight, published expenditure reports and will not increase the current tax rates voters already pay to support their local schools,” said Superintendent Carlomagno.
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CLICK HERE FOR THE SUMMARY OF VOTER SURVERY RESULTS
PREPARED BY: Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates
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