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San Joaquin, Alameda County, CA June 8, 2010 Election
Smart Voter

Vote Yes On Measure A

By James F. Hiramoto

Candidate for Governing Board Member; Proposed Lammersville Joint Unified School District

This information is provided by the candidate
I was talking with one of our Mountain House Little Leaguer's grandmother about Measure A and she had some great questions. She said that she hadn't heard these reasons for voting for Measure A expressed, at least not in the paper, or broadly in the community. She made the suggestion for me to get the word out...so here it goes.
Measure A allows Lammersville Elementary School District (currently a Kindergarten through 8th grade), to become a Joint Unified School District (becoming a Kindergarten through 12 grade district). One of the benefits of Unification is the added ADA (Average Daily Attendance) money the new Joint Unified will receive from the state. Every school district receives a set dollar amount for every student. The amount depends on the type of district. A kinder-eighth grade district receives less per student than a kinder-high school. Using 2008-2009 data (from Ed-Data), Lammersville's ADA was, $6440. Tracy Unified's ADA was $7,483. So in 08-09, Tracy Unified received $1,043 more for every student (k-12). If we do not vote yes on Measure A, we will be cutting our own school budget by the amount we could have gotten if we unified, by the tune of about $1,000 per student. Our unified district will receive this increased ADA for every student even though our high school students will attend Tracy, until our high school is built. The state understands that it will take funds to develop the curriculum, and infrastructure to support a high school, so they allow the district to collect funds (the increased ADA for the k-8 students) before the district provides the high school education. Tracy will continue to receive the ADA funds for our high school students until we provide their education.

Another benefit to the district being Unified, is to have our own high school. Can we pay for it given all of these budget cuts? YES. The high school is paid for with developer fees. These are the fees homeowners paid when they bought their homes. There are no new or additional taxes that will come with the building of our high school.

In order to get the high school we've already paid for...

In order to get more money to support our children's education...

We need to vote, Yes on Measure A.

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ca/sj Created from information supplied by the candidate: May 29, 2010 10:14
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