Publication Date: Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Our Town: A war of numbers

by Don Kazak

The Measure A school parcel tax election is chock-full of numbers: Big numbers, small numbers and percentages. No algebra equations yet, but somewhere, math teachers are smiling.

The June 7 election asks Palo Alto Unified School District voters to approve a $493 per year parcel tax. A similar measure fell 221 votes short in November.

As a mark of how different this campaign is, the Measure A folks are aggressively questioning information being put out by Wayne Martin and his group, which is trying to torpedo the tax effort.

Last time, the school supporters sat on their hands without challenging Martin's arguments and, whoops, came up just a wee bit short. 

This time, they are hammering back.

Jon Foster, one of the three co-chairs of the Measure A campaign, points to some of the numbers in a leaflet being dropped at homes by Measure A opponents.

The leaflet, "The Best Reason for Voting NO on Measure A," lists four groups of students, 1,383 in all, including transfer students, that the district is paying a "subsidy" of $12.5 million a year to educate.

Here's where the fun begins.

For most of those students, Martin uses $10,500 a year as the cost of educating each student.

But Foster said Martin ignores fixed costs -- the district does not save $10,500 per student, just the "marginal cost" of about $5,000 per student per year if a large number of students leave.

Martin's leaflet implies the district could save $12 million annually by throwing transfer and Stanford kids out of the district.

Except it can't. It is legally bound to educate all but 116 of those students (who are sons and daughters of district employees who don't live in the district).

So who's right?

"They're both right," said Associate Superintendent George Matranga. The $10,500 a year figure is the average cost per year for educating each student in the district (Martin is right). But if you lopped off a few hundred students, the savings would be about $5,000 per student (Foster is right).

Confused?

Mark Twain made famous the saying that there are three kinds of lies: "lies, damn lies and statistics."

And how Martin uses these particular statistics is suspect, to put it mildly, in that he implies a savings that wouldn't really exist.

"The $5,000 number may be true, but it's not documented" in district reports, Martin said.

"If you want to oppose Measure A, fine," Foster said. "But don't mislead people. This, to me, is beyond what is acceptable campaign practices."

While the campaign is a war of numbers, it's also a war of words.

The Measure A Web page ( www.campaignforexcellence.org ) has nine position papers on various subjects to which voters can refer.

Wimps.

Martin's opposition Web site (www.4betterschools.com) has 60 position papers, 40 on school district finances alone. That's serious wordage.

Foster chafes at what he feels is disinformation Martin is generating: "Either he knows the truth and is being deliberately misleading, or he hasn't done the research," Foster said.

"I don't know why he would say that," Martin replied. "(The number) is used by the school district."

Measure A has nothing to do with transfer students, Foster added, which is trumpeted by Martin as "the best" reason for voting against Measure A.

"Some people against Measure A have other issues with the district," Foster said, "like 'the superintendent is overpaid,' and will still be if Measure A is defeated."

There is one argument against Measure A that brought Foster up short, though. He knocked on a door and an 86-year-old man grumpily said, "'You didn't help put my kids through school,' I didn't have a reply to that," Foster said.

It remains to be seen how much of replay this election will be to November's.

The big difference is that this is a special election with a much smaller turnout than the general election. Some 33,000 people voted on the last parcel tax, roughly 22,000 in favor and 11,000 against. The turnout this time could be 12,000 to 15,000, which means all the Measure A supporters would need would be 8, 000 to 10,000 votes.

But Martin only needs 4,000 to 5,000 votes to defeat it.

"It will be close," Foster predicted.

Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.

http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morgue/2005/2005_05_25.town25vote3.shtml