Voters in northern Alameda County will get a chance to reauthorize an important funding source for the Peralta Community College District in the June 2 election.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Measure A would extend by nine years the life of an existing $48 annual parcel tax which, if approved by two-thirds of voters, would raise $8 million a year for the four-college system.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the cost of U.C., Cal State, and private colleges continues to skyrocket, YES on A ensures students continue to save thousands of dollars and avoid high-interest debt,\u201d according to the ballot argument submitted in favor of the measure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No argument opposed to Measure A was submitted to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters Office.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Currently, tuition at a Peralta college is about $1,100 per year, compared to about $6,500 for Cal State schools and nearly $14,000 for schools in the University of California system.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Peralta schools include Berkeley City College, the College of Alameda, and Oakland\u2019s Laney and Merritt colleges.<\/p>\n
The $8 million raised by Measure A could only be spent to support job training programs, student services, and academic classes throughout the system.<\/p>\n
Currently the money is often used to hire part-time instructors so the college system can add additional sections for classes that students need for their degrees.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The funds can\u2019t be spent on hiring administrators.<\/p>\n
If Measure A passes, it will be the third time voters have given the green light to the parcel tax, which helps support the college system\u2019s roughly $140 million annual general fund budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If approved, the funds will be monitored by an independent citizens\u2019 oversight committee and independent financial and performance audits.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A Peralta spokesperson said the money supports a critical piece of the state\u2019s higher education landscape and emphasized the system\u2019s affordability and the fact that students are taught by instructors who aren\u2019t graduate students working on their PhDs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of a better experience for students all the way around,\u201d said Mark Johnson.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
So far, the Yes on Measure A campaign has raised about $148,000 in donations, with a lot of support coming from Bay Area labor unions, according to disclosure documents filed with Alameda County.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
For more information about Measure A, people can visit peraltayesona.com<\/a> or www.peralta.edu\/measure-a<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The post Voters to decide fate of $8M annual parcel tax for Peralta Community College District<\/a> appeared first on Local News Matters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Voters in northern Alameda County will get a chance to reauthorize an important funding source for the Peralta…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-290694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}