the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 11, 2024
On November 5, Los Angeles voters approved Measure US, which allows the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to issue new bonds. The money raised, 9 billion dollars, is supposed to be used to repair and maintain school facilities, and it will be paid back, with interest, through an increase in property taxes.
Measure US is the seventh facilities bond measure that the LAUSD has put on the ballot since 1997. Voters approved each and every one of the previous six measures, for a total of nearly 28 billion dollars. And yet, tens of thousands of children in L.A. go to school every day in overcrowded classrooms, in buildings where the floors and ceilings are moldy, the roofs leak, and heating and air conditioning don’t work.
District officials themselves said that L.A. schools need 50,000 heating and air conditioning units, and that 18 million square feet of new roofs and 2 million square feet of plumbing also need to be replaced. In other words, the district raised all that money for decades, but didn’t even do much of the routine maintenance!
But voters approved a tax increase, once again, because authorities blackmailed them: you either pay, or schools fall apart even more.
The LAUSD is not alone. On the same November ballot, there were 25 other, smaller school districts in Los Angeles County with their own bond measures for facilities upkeep, for a total of 6 billion dollars. In addition, California had its own, statewide ballot measure for school repairs, to the tune of 10 billion dollars. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, 2.24 million students in California, nearly 40% of the state’s K-12 students, attend schools that do not meet minimum standards for safety and cleanliness.
All because California has not been providing adequate funding for public education for decades. But California is also home to some public schools with excellent, state-of-the-art facilities. Those schools are in well-to-do areas, where property tax revenue is high, and where parents can also pay extra to improve school facilities. But in working-class neighborhoods, where families struggle to survive, authorities leave schools to rot.
This extreme inequality in education is a reflection of the extreme, and growing, inequality in capitalist society. Capitalist society not only throws more and more workers into poverty, it also throws away the education—that is, the future—of working-class youth.