Legislation to put a $13 billion school construction bond on the state ballot next year and a second bond in 2022 moved forward this week with strong support overall from the education community — and a vague promise by the bill’s author to address concerns that state building aid to school districts isn’t equitably distributed. With $9 billion in state funding from the last state bond, in 2016, either spent or committed, Assembly Bill 48 received unanimous approval of the Senate Education Committee after a short hearing on Wednesday. But important details remain to be fleshed out before the full Senate votes later this summer and Gov. Gavin Newsom has yet to give his opinion of the proposed amount and other aspects of the bill. The size of the second bond also hasn’t been determined. School construction bonds that voters passed in 2002, 2004 and 2006 ranged from $10.4 billion to $13.1 billion. Under the state school construction program, the state supplements the cost of construction projects that school districts and community colleges fund with bonds raised through local property taxes. The state pays half of the cost of a new school and pays for 60 percent of the cost of renovating a school or college campus. AB 48 would include preschool facilities in next year’s next bond, and the bill’s author, Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach, who chairs the Assembly Education Committee, confirmed Wednesday that $500 million would be set aside for charter school construction — the same as in the 2016 bond, Proposition 51. There also would be money to fix water systems contaminated by levels of lead violating federal standards. But where the rest of the money would go hasn’t been set. If Prop. 51 is a guide, however, $10 billion would likely go to K-12 districts and $3 billion to community colleges. During an EdSource webinar about the state building program on Tuesday, panelist Eric Bakke, legislative advocate for the California School Boards Association, a co-sponsor of AB 48, said he’d favor more money for modernization than for new construction — reflecting the need to repair aging buildings statewide and, in many districts, declining or stagnant student enrollment. A study last year for the Getting Down to Facts research project, organized by the research nonprofit PACE and Stanford University, found that the current state formula favors school districts with larger tax bases, particularly for renovating schools. Higher property values enable them to issue school bonds qualifying for large state matching grants. Those districts also tend to have families with higher than average incomes and fewer low-income students.

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