Commentary and Opinion by Samuel Strait – October 27, 2024

It is a fair enough question to ask in light of the $59 million bond offered by the school district on this year’s November ballot.   The school district’s current projected budget is a shade under $75 million dollars.  Once the State of California completes its budget process it could increase to $80 million. The City of Crescent City’s most recent budget is in the neighborhood of $45 million.  The school district student population for the 2024-2025 school year is marked at 3,450, which will decline over the course of the year to barely over 3,000.  Crescent City on the other hand has to provide services for about 5,300 residents as well as several thousand visitors each year.  I repeat, does the school district have too much?

As most property owners know, the continual claim that the school district has needs that exceed its ability to provide adequate upgrades and modernization for its students often come at times when most home owners are experiencing a constant parade of head winds that are unaffordable.  With increasing regularity they come in the form of local taxing agencies such as our school district which has an abysmal record to show for the millions they already receive.  As such it is perhaps time to check the record of the school district to see if that monetary grift is absolutely necessary.

The school district currently has eleven school sites, most of which are in good to fair condition, per the district’s superintendent of schools.  For sometime now the district’s student population has declined substantially making the need to maintain and staff eleven school sites some what questionable.  The school district also maintains a wide variety of other sites that have little to do with educating students.  Why does the district continue to to maintain site and staffing levels that exceeds its needs by a substantial margin?  And why does it always become the task of those outside the educational community of cloud dwellers to point to the obvious?

It clearly is not a question of monetary need that bewilders those on the school board or the district’s executive staff, but how to distribute funding when you have too much to address and not enough need to justify the number of school and ancillary sites, as well as staffing population in the district for the student population it serves.  Particularly in light of the district’s dreadful record on the educational front, how is it able to say with a straight face that the local property owners must face a general obligation bond when the district currently sits on millions of dollars of funding that must be spent on more unnecessary staffing?

For the school district it is always somebody else’s fault.  The State doesn’t allow us to be financially responsible.  We can’t maintain our school sites because too much of our budget is required for unnecessary staffing.  We can’t properly educate because of parental failings.  General maintenance costs too much.  And on and on.  The whole system of Public Education is a train wreck that has utterly failed in its primary task, educating youth.  It is not a revelation that Public Education and the local school district go hand in hand with failure to accomplish for decades the solitary task asked of it, to educate.

All the pleadings of its “for the children” should be set aside until the local school district gets its house in order.  Kids do not care whether they are being educated on the lawn in front of  school site, or in a ramshackled one room school house, there just has to be some sort of effort to actually educate.  Clearly this is something the local district has forgotten about and is inclined to make excuses and point to inconsequential material voids that are irrelevant in the broader scheme of educating young adults.

Does the school district need $59 million for what is clearly general maintenance?  Absolutely NOT!  Vote NO! on Measure H on November 5th.  Time for a little dose of reality for the local school district.  Time for the public to stop carrying water for school district failures to educate!  Time for the district to get real about their needs!  Vote NO on Measure H!!!!!!!!!!