Vote for Parcel Tax Deadline Nears

With the time ticking on days left to vote for the parcel tax, the remains optimistic and encourages its voters to help its schools.

This is the second parcel tax in two years for the district, worth $125 each, and each for a limited six-year term. That's according to Phil Quon, superintendent of Cupertino Union School District, which encompasses 20 elementary schools and five middle schools across six cities.

“Obviously, if you have a $7 million budget gap, a successful parcel tax will generate $4.3 million, so there’s still a shortfall, but it will help,” Quon said. “The positive piece about Measure C is that all of those funds come to the district and cannot be taken from the district by the state. The funds stay in the district schools.”

Quon said the 2009 parcel tax filled in the budget gap at the time, but the state has continued to cut funding to schools.

This parcel tax comes at a difficult time for schools across the state and the county. is one of four in Santa Clara County that have opted for special mail-in ballot elections on May 3. These schools include , Cupertino Union School District, the next highest, Sunnyvale School District, at $59, and , at $49.

Seniors 65 and older can apply to the Cupertino district to be exempt from the tax. If the senior is already exempt from the first tax, that automatically rolls over to this next one, said Phyllis Vogel, vice-president of the school board and co-chairwoman of the Measure C Campaign.

“I just think the state is such an unreliable source for our funding,” Vogel said. “They’ve cut the whole education system for billions of dollars the last few years.”

Vogel said education is the responsibility of the whole community. Those with children in the district want their students to succeed, and those without children in the district want their property values to stay high.

A two-thirds-plus-one approval is needed for the parcel tax to pass, according to Vogel. Campaign volunteers have done phone banks, with two weeks left, and knocked on doors to educate the community about the parcel tax and to encourage its vote. 

Quon said the polling in January showed only 65 percent were for the parcel tax, so he said the district is “optimistic,” but “a good, strong campaign will help.”

Dave Villafana, president of the Cupertino Education Association, said the parcel tax is necessary in order to maintain the “great schools” the district has now and to help the students’ futures.

“Without the parcel tax, I don’t know how we’d feel it. I cannot even imagine it,” Villafana said.

Villafana added that this school year, a parents group did a fundraiser, earning $2.5 million, toward retaining teachers, but this is not a possibility every year, he said.

Teachers also took five furlough days this year, he said. The district is tightening its belt and staff is doing what it can, but “with the budget crisis looming this year, we had no other alternative than to do another parcel tax,” Villafana said.

Vogel said some cuts the board has approved, if cuts are needed, include cutting class sizes in grades one through three to a student-teacher ratio of 30-to-1, on average. It also may include reducing custodial night crew staffing, cutting district-funded library media clerk funding and cutting middle school counselors. 

She said if the parcel tax passes, the district is looking at a student-to-teacher ratio of 24- or 25-to-one, which is still more than the current 20-to-1 average, but “much better” than the 30-to-1 possibility.

Ballots have arrived in mailboxes for the past week. Votes need to be received by the county no later than May 3, so Vogel encourages citizens to send their votes as soon as possible, or at least by the end of the month.