The largest school facility bond proposal in California history—a $15 billion request—appears headed for defeat.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Proposition 13 was losing with 56% of voters opposing it.
The measure would have enabled California’s schools, public universities and community colleges to upgrade facilities and build new ones.
It would be the first time voters rejected a statewide education facilities bond in more than two decades.
[From 2016: Californians approve $9 billion bond for school construction]
Most Bay Area counties supported the measure, including San Francisco, where 73% of voters approved of the bond. But voters resoundingly rejected the initiative in many suburban and rural areas across the state.
A loss would leave school and higher education officials struggling to cover the cost of facilities with local bonds alone. The measure would have allocated $9 billion to K-12 schools, $4 billion for California’s public universities and $2 billion for community colleges.
During the campaign, critics questioned the high cost of repairing or building schools and college classrooms with bonds. Supporters, however, said the state has about a $100 billion backlog in education facilities projects and Proposition 13 would go a long way to addressing that when partnered with local bond money.
Gov. Gavin Newsom actively campaigned for the measure, but it wasn’t enough to overcome what polls found was lukewarm support for the initiative in the weeks and months preceding the election.
Early on, supporters feared that voters would confuse efforts to amend the original Proposition13 passed in 1978 with the facilities bond measure, but efforts to change the number assigned to the initiative failed. It’s unclear how much that affected the tally Tuesday.
In general, K-12 school districts, which serve 9.2 million students, would have had to provide matching funds to qualify for state money.
