As to the high schools, all one has to do is take a look at the bus stop at the high schools waiting for buses to Oakland after school is out, to see the numbers.

Thanks for your investigation into the PAC for the parcel tax. Now I am beginning to see the whole picture. What a bunch of dupes we have been!!!

Also – further to your point. Don Perata has family in Alameda with kids in district schools. So does John Garamendi who was California’s Lt. Governor for a while, and a long-time Sacramento politician. These family members are key players in the school parcel taxes, year over year. Rebecca Rosati-Perata was listed as the contact for KASE in 2008, when that group was the PAC for Measure H.

http://www.action-alameda-news.com/2008/11/01/infighting-tearing-up-alameda-education-foundation/

To L. Bond, it is true. When the formula for ADA (the amount AUSD receives per child) was computed, it was based on how much the community istself paid for the schools. Students who had parents working Civil Service at the base, or in the military constituted 2 additional sources of millions of dollars in funds that AUSD (and Oakland) received from the federal government. Newer districts such as Dublin and Pleasanton were in the process of building schools- so paid more. Under the current formula, Alameda and Oakland suffer the most. Pleasanton and Dublin simply receive more. It is up to the state legislature to change this because the schools receive 61% of funding from the state under this formula. President of the Senate Don Perata (A former EHS teacher) and Assy. Majority Whip Wilma Chan both came from our district when they were in the State legislature and were 2 of the most powerful persons therein.
AUSD and the Educational support groups spent their time passing parcel tax after parcel tax instead of forcing these elected officials to take care of education – something Don and Wilma both claimed, on their websites at least, to be of the highest priority to them. Ultimately the failures of these two elected officials to adequatley represent their constituents is in large part that which is responsible for our parcel taxes.

The inter-district kids get sent primarily to west-end schools, because those are the schools that have space.

There’s an argument to be made that elementary schools need to be consolidated to fill seats with Alameda students (funded by alameda taxpayers) than out-of-district students. East-end schools are at capacity or over-enrolled, while West-end schools are generally under capacity.

But doing that would break a kind of de facto segregation that exists in our elementary schools – primarily asian and white students in East-end schools and the “diversity” that everyone says they love in West-end schools.

Approving purchase orders for $64,000 without going to bid, without a written contract, without any apparent documentation of what was paid for with the $21,000 expended of that order? And a conflict as to what and by whom the “Website” was re-designed? They have a fulltime lawyer on board now, and this is how they conduct business? What will change if AUSD is rewarded for such poor business practices by approval of yet another $659.00 parcel tax? Why shouldn’t they have to watch their pennies the way everyone else has been forced to do? Everyone is going through downturns, down sizing, homes underwater, working fewer hours if they still have a job, foreclosures. AUSD is not special, it is inefficient and poorly managed. Before it deserves another dime, it should be held accountable for how it has spent the money in the past.