California Gov. Jerry Brown during a rally on Monday in support of Proposition 30. (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

California voters soundly passed Proposition 30, 54 to 46 percent. Many considered it the biggest measure on this California ballot.

Gov. Jerry Brown crisscrossed the state in recent weeks making his pitch, supported by union leaders, teachers and others keen to avoid the “trigger cuts” that would have hit had Prop. 30 failed. But even before the final count was in, the governor was in a buoyant mood at the Yes on 30 election night party in downtown Sacramento.

Gov. Brown had a lot on the line with Prop 30. It imposes a temporary 1/4-cent sales tax and raises income taxes on the wealthy for seven years.

The failure of Prop. 30 would have triggered $6 billion in education cuts. And the governor staked his reputation on the measure, making it his top priority.

But last night as Prop. 30 was trending well, and exit polls looked promising, Brown was very optimistic.

“[This is] the only place in America where the state said, ‘let’s raise taxes for kids, for our schools, for our California dream,’” Brown said.

Brown took aim at Proposition 30′s opponents for what he called their doctrinaire thinking that government can’t do anything right.

And that was one of the major challenges of the Prop. 30 campaign. For the past five years the state has used education funding to balance the budget, and opponents say they don’t trust lawmakers to spend the money as promised.

Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers’ Association says he’s optimistic that voters understood Prop. 30 guarantees funding for schools, despite a well funded ‘no’ campaign.

“One of the things voters consistently have said is California is not for sale,” Vogel said. “We want to decide for ourselves what we’re going to do, and I believe they’re doing that tonight.”

The “No on Proposition 30″ campaign was outspent, but still well-funded. A large contribution from out-of-state groups came under scrutiny by state regulators who on Monday said the donation represents the largest case of campaign money laundering in state history.

Proposition 30 also faced a threat from a competing education funding measure, Proposition 38, funded by billionaire Molly Munger. That measure was soundly defeated.

Mary Prime-Lawrence canvasses East Oakland voters for GO. (Lillian Mongeau/KQED)

The role of money in politics is a big issue in many elections this year – including the race for four seats on the Oakland Schools Board of Education.

A local non-profit, the teachers’ union, and the board candidates themselves are expected to spend more than $300,000 on seats that have been uncontested in more than half the races since 2004.

Mary Prime-Lawrence is a dozen doors into her list of registered voters on 88th Avenue in East Oakland. She’s standing in the dark hallway of a rundown fourplex. Most people haven’t been home, so she smiles when the deadbolt slides open.

“Hi there. Is Michelle Logan in? Are you Michelle? She’s not here right now? Can I leave some information for her? If you can give her that. James Harris is running for school board. We hope she can give him her support November 6,” Prime-Lawrence asks.

After 40 minutes, Prime-Lawrence has met only two of the voters she’s looking for. The low numbers haven’t dampened her conviction that this is the right way to spend her Saturday morning.

“In Oakland if you are un- or under-educated, you are more likely to get pregnant, get someone pregnant. Be involved in gangs, in drugs, in violence. It’s a life and death issue for some people, for some children,” she says.

Prime-Lawrence, a mother of three, lives nearby and teaches afterschool math at a charter school. She’s working with “Great Oakland Public Schools,” known around town as “GO.” The group is campaigning for big changes in Oakland’s schools. They want schools to have more autonomy and a better teacher evaluation system, and they want bond measures that support both traditional and charter schools.

And they want school board members who will make all that come to pass.

“The school board is really important in Oakland,” says GO’s Managing Director Jessica Stewart. “They control a $600 million budget. They choose the superintendent. They just make really important policy decisions for our kids.”

This is GO’s first political campaign and its political action committee has raised $184,000 to spend on supporting the three candidates and two ballot initiatives they’ve endorsed. In addition to dozens of small donations, GO has received three checks for $50,000 each. Two came from individuals: conservative philanthropist Gary Rogers of Oakland and moderate venture capitalist Arthur Rock of San Francisco. The third is from the California Charter Schools Association.

The city’s teachers’ union is backing different school board candidates. The union says it’s concerned about the motives of GO’s big donors.

“It’s just not healthy for democracy when two people can come in and just flood an election with huge amounts of money,” says Steve Neat, vice president of the Oakland Education Association, the city’s teachers’ union. “I’m sure they’re expecting to get something for that kind of investment. Nobody puts $50,000 into a campaign unless they expect something back in my opinion.”

Both Neat and Stewart say they welcome the competition.

The groups also agree on several other points. Both want the state to spend more money on K-12 education, smaller class sizes in schools and for more Oakland grads to go to college. But they often disagree, sometimes profoundly, on how to get there. GO’s heavy duty fundraising illustrates that point, and Stewart makes no apologies.

“We’re just doing whatever it takes because this really matters. This is a one in four years opportunity to have four seats up on the school board,” she says.  “And we’re in this to win it.”

Whoever wins will have to take on budget challenges, the new union contract, controversies over charter schools and how to tackle the job of educating all of Oakland’s kids.

If you want to sport this sticker, you'll have to decipher the state ballot and then vote. (EVA HAMBACH/AFP/Getty Images)

by Lisa Aliferis and Jon Brooks

It’s getting down to the wire — just seven days to make up your mind on a plethora of issues and races … and then ya gotta vote.

Lucky you: We’re here to help.

Our reports about Props. 30 and 38 (education and taxes); the nine-item Prop. 31 (governance) and Prop. 37 (labeling GMO foods) are attracting a lot of attention online. So either we’ve really figured out this SEO thing, or you’re genuinely interested in those initiatives in particular.

Thus, we’re compiling the best-of-the-best of our coverage on these props so that you don’t have to stand in the voting booth pondering whether numerological concerns aren’t going to be the one determining factor after all in how you vote on these things, complex as they are, yet sold, packaged and soundbited by opponents and proponents alike direct to your Id.

So read up!

-Proposition 30 and Proposition 38 both promise to fund schools, but in different ways.

• Explaining the Difference Between Props 30 and 38
• Gov’s Prop. 30 Tax Hike: More for Schools … or More Money Misspent?
• Video: This Week in Northern California recently devoted its full program to the dueling propositions

-Proposition 31 will do nine (yes, 9) different things, attempting to overhaul state governance. God knows California governance needs overhaul, but is Prop. 31 the right approach?

• Making Sense of the Very, Very Complicated Prop. 31
• Supporter and Opponent Explain Prop. 31′s ‘Community Strategic Action Plans’

-Proposition 37 requires the labeling of genetically modified ingredients in foods.

• California’s Prop. 37: Are GMO Labels a Scarlet Letter?
• Fact-Checking the Arguments on Prop. 37

On Friday, KQED’s This Week in Northern California examined the competing propositions.

Voters in Redwood City approved a local tax for district schools earlier this year. (Ana Tintocalis: KQED)

Redwood City is a suburb just south of San Francisco. In recent years, the city has restored its historic downtown area and cleaned up its neighborhoods. But one thing remains the same: the Redwood City school district still gets the lowest amount of state education funding compared to neighboring communities — a result of the state’s complex school funding formula. That rubs 78-year-old Redwood City education advocate Margaret Marshall the wrong way. “It’s not fair and it’s wrong,” she says.

Marshall served on the district’s school board back in the 1980s. But when the state cut millions from education funding over the last two years, she took action. Marshall and an army of volunteers spent hours drafting a local parcel tax for Redwood City schools this past spring. Parcel taxes have become extremely popular among public school districts because the money raised goes directly into local campuses and teachers.

Redwood City tried three times before to pass a parcel tax, but this time Marshall says voters were finally ready to listen. “I had more coffee and cups of tea in the little coffeehouses locally,” she tells me. “But when you take the time to explain it to someone, one-on-one, you feel better about it. I think lots of times people distrust because they don’t understand what is happening.”

That grassroots effort paid off in the June primary. Redwood City schools will now get $1.7 million extra every year for the next several years.

It’s not just this community. Voters across California approved a record number of local school parcel taxes in elections earlier this year. Now, in the November election, a whopping 131 local school tax initiatives will appear on ballots across California.

Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, says voters’ recent inclination to support such measures could spell trouble for the two statewide tax hike initiatives Propositions 30 and 38. “If [voters] see the money being spent on their block, on their street, in their child’s school, they’re at least willing to consider that tax increase,” Schnur said.

Of the two statewide tax proposals, Gov. Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30 has greater public support, but voters are still not convinced the money it raises will get to local classrooms. Schnur says Brown’s biggest political roadblock is deep-rooted voter skepticism — which is why Brown has pushed so hard for pension and welfare reform, and even cut down on cell phones that state employees have at their disposal.

“Almost everything he has done has been designed to say to voters, ‘Hey look! You can trust me with your tax dollars,’” Schnur says.

The governor’s Prop. 30 television ads reflect his ‘you can trust me’ message. In the ads Brown has softened his take-charge tone and is shown chatting with students in colorful classrooms and libraries.

Prop. 30 would raise about $6 billion by both taxing California’s wealthiest and increasing the sales tax for all. Roughly half of the new money would go toward public schools and community colleges. The rest would help tackle the state’s structural deficit.

Critics say the governor is misleading voters by claiming Prop. 30 is an education tax measure when it also raises revenue for other uses.

Brown’s campaign, however, says stabilizing the state’s overall budget is essential for school funding. Educators and parents who support Prop. 30 emphasize what will happen if the measure does not pass — a $6 billion spending cut halfway into this school year.

Cuts Would Hit Small Districts Especially Hard

The Pajaro Valley Unified School District, which serves the agricultural community of Wastonville, needs all the money it can get to provide extra resources for its students who are learning English as a second language.

The district’s chief business officer Brett McFadden says that is why the Pajaro Valley school board, the local teachers union, and community groups have endorsed Prop. 30. However, McFadden says the governor’s measure is still not a perfect solution.

“Prop. 30 would just stabilize us. We don’t get anything extra from it. [The measure] just protects us against a further cut. To that extent, it isn’t a magic bullet. It’s a temporary fix.” McFadden said.

Still, the statewide tax hike proposal remains Watsonville’s best hope. Most immigrant parents here don’t earn a lot of money, and many are not registered voters. As hard as it was for Redwood City to pass a local parcel tax, Watsonville would face an even steeper climb to securing a two-thirds vote. The statewide measures need just a simple majority vote: 50 percent plus one.

A poll this week by the Public Policy Institute of California shows the governor’s Prop. 30 measure with 48 percent support, and Prop. 38 with 39 percent.

The challenge over the next week-and-a-half will be whether either campaign can bridge the “tax-trust” divide.

Through the studio glass: Michael Krasny hosts KQED's daily call-in show "Forum."

Here at KQED, we take elections pretty seriously. It’s a time when our mission of educating the public comes to a head — the messages coming from the campaigns are unrelenting and taken as a whole can present a confusing picture. So helping you cast an informed vote is our aim.

That was the philosophy behind our state proposition guide. Some people, however, prefer listening to reading. For those folks we present a complete archive of Forum’s 2012 state proposition shows. Some are an hour long, some are half an hour, but all present views from both sides and include community input we received via calls, emails, Facebook and Twitter. So sit back, turn up your speakers, and take a listen…

Prop. 30: Gov. Brown’s Tax Increase for Education, Public Safety

Prop. 31: Revises the State Budget Process

Prop. 32: Campaign Finance Reform or an Attack on Unions?

Prop. 33: Changes to Auto Insurance

Prop. 34: The Death Penalty in California

Prop. 35: Ban on Human Trafficking and Sex Slavery

Prop. 36: Should Three Strikes Be Changed?

Prop. 37: The Fight Over GMO Labeling

Prop. 38: Molly Munger’s Tax Initiative for Education

Prop 39: How We Tax Multi-State Businesses

Please note: Forum did not produce a show on Proposition 40. You can find more information on that here.

The boundaries of Senate District 15. (aroundthecapitol.com and googlemaps)

With November 6^th fast approaching, campaigns are ratcheting up across the Bay Area, and candidates are doing everything they can to sway voters. That’s a big challenge for two state Senate hopefuls in the South Bay’s 15^th Senate District. The district stretches from Cupertino through Saratoga and across most of San Jose.

In the past, this largely Democratic area wouldn’t have been much of a contest this late in the game. The Democrat who won the primary would usually have been a shoo-in in November. But not this year. The new Top Two Primary system pitted two Democrats against each other — Joe Coto and Jim Beall.

Coto is more about education … followed by jobs: “I want to focus a great deal of attention on school reform and on this new world of globalization and information technology,” he says. “Education and its relationship to work, to jobs.”

And Beall says his top issue is the economy … with education close behind: “We’re going to the new age of the economy in terms of the information age. As a result, there’s a lot of people that don’t have jobs. Second issue probably would be — the top budget priority for the state — would be education,” says Beall.

If Coto’s and Beall’s top issues sound pretty similar, it’s because they are. They’ve also both been Assembly Members. Coto termed out in 2010, and Beall will this year. Now, they’re doing everything they can to differentiate themselves.

At the Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara, Coto and Beall appealed to voters at a recent candidate forum. The two Democrats were largely on the same page, until the moderator asked each candidate about the competing school funding propositions on the ballot, Gov. Brown’s Proposition 30 and Molly Munger’s Proposition 38.

“I’m in favor of Proposition 30. Prop. 30 is modest, conservative and also — by the way — temporary tax increase,” Beall said. He quietly finished by saying he opposed Proposition 38, something Coto seized on.

“Proposition 30 is, at best, the status quo. Proposition 38, on the other hand, is totally for public education,” Coto said.

Yet retired San Jose State political science professor Terry Christensen says such disagreements won’t seal the deal for either candidate — neither will the fact that Beall has raised a bit more money, or that Coto’s Latino heritage could give him an edge with the district’s many Latino voters. Christensen says that’s why both sides have done some negative campaigning. “Races like this get pretty cutthroat,” he says, “especially when you have two people who are pretty close in terms of policy positions.”

Beall has tried to link Coto to a scandal involving his former employer trading gifts for school construction contracts. Coto has accused Beall of trying to block pension reform to appease union supporters. Christensen says what the candidates should really do, though, is think outside the box. “To win, they’ve got to reach out to some decline-to-state or independent voters, and that’s a pretty big chunk of the electorate — and maybe some Republicans as well,” he explains.

Of course, Beall and Coto both say they work well with those across the aisle. So, it should come as no surprise that they have yet another thing in common. Their plan to reach those coveted voters — through mail, phone calls and knocking on doors.

Teachers at Angeles Mesa Elementary School in Los Angeles review voter information on Proposition 38 during a recent teacher union meeting. (Ana Tintocalis: KQED)

Education advocates in California say public schools will either sink or swim based on the outcome of two competing tax initiatives on the November ballot — Proposition 30 and Proposition 38. While both aim to protect students from more devastating budget cuts, they go about it in very different ways.

To better understand what is at stake for California’s public schools, I started off by visiting the headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest district in the state.

LAUSD has had to cut about half a billion dollars from its budget every year for the past five years because of the state’s money problems. Class sizes have swollen to more than 40 students; the school year was cut by five instructional days, and teachers have lost their jobs.

The person behind every difficult financial decision is Megan Reilly, the district’s Chief Financial Officer.

Her office is perched on the 26th floor of a skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles. Stacks of papers and financial reports are piled on and around her desk. Although she has a sweeping view of the city, she can’t take her eyes off of a series of large monthly calendars on the wall.

November 6th, Election Day, is circled, underlined and highlighted.

“I don’t think you can not think about it,” Reilly says. “We’re just in limbo because everything is critical about what is going to happen at the November election.”

Reilly views the election as a watershed moment for schools, because if voters do not approve Prop. 30 or Prop. 38, L.A. Unified — along with most other districts in California — will be pushed further down the road toward insolvency.

“I can’t face counselor ratios going even higher,” Reilly says. “I can’t face class sizes going even higher. It’s really hard for anyone to face the public saying, ‘I’m going to have to take more away from the schools.’ There’s nothing more to take.”

Reilly and other school administrators across the state believe Gov. Jerry Brown’s initiative, Prop. 30, offers the most immediate relief.

It would raise roughly $3 billion for public schools and community colleges by taxing the wealthiest Californians for seven years and it would increase the sales tax by a quarter-cent, a hike that everyone would have to pay. Overall, the measure would raise $6 billion for education and to balance the state budget.

However, should voters reject Prop. 30, schools will get hit with a $6 billion spending cut halfway through this school year. Many districts would be forced to lop off three full weeks of instruction.

“These are horrific cuts,” says Dan Schnur, director of the Jess Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California.

Schnur says that given the constant cuts to public education, taxpayers may finally be ready for the first time in almost 20 years.to reach into their pockets to help schools.

“The biggest challenge for Governor Brown is convincing them that state government can be trusted to spend their tax dollars wisely and effectively.” The governor faces a trust issue because for the past five years, lawmakers have tapped into the state’s special pot of education funding to balance the budget.

The $3 billion raised annually by Prop. 30 would go back into that education pot, refilling it to the same level as before all of the cuts. This move would stabilize school funding and  eventually  even expand it. It would also free up existing general fund dollars for other needs because that is part of the governor’s larger plan to fix the state’s structural budget deficit.

One person who doesn’t trust the governor’s strategy is Molly Munger, the wealthy civil rights attorney who is bankrolling Proposition 38 — the competing education tax initiative. Munger’s name has been splashed across the news because she’s been criticizing the governor and Sacramento lawmakers for squandering education dollars.

“[Voters] are willing to pay the tax. But they insist, rightly, that the money not go to Sacramento, because they know if it goes there, bad things will happen to it,” Munger said in a recent interview with San Francisco’s KNBC Channel 3.

Unlike the governor’s initiative, Prop. 38 would tax the income of almost every Californian for 12 years. Under the initiative, public schools could receive as much as $10 billion the first year, which would be set apart from the state’s general fund. Some of the money would also go to preschools and to paying down bond debt.

Scott Kaplan has three children in the Redondo Beach Unified School District, just north of Long Beach. He’s backing Prop. 38 because he believes it would give communities more control of how the extra money is spent.

“It’s a huge amount of money for our district of 11 schools,” Kaplan said. “What we can do with those funds at the local level … is phenomenal.”

But the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office points out there is more to Prop. 38 than meets the eye. Because the money is earmarked for education, the initiative would do nothing to help California’s overall budget deficit. The measure also comes with a myriad of funding rules that school administrators say would be difficult to navigate.

And then there is the issue of timing. The Legislative Analyst states Prop. 38 tax dollars may not flow into schools until sometime during the next school year.

Erica Jones teaches 3rd grade at Angeles Mesa Elementary School near Inglewood. She backs the governor’s plan, Prop. 30, because she doesn’t want schools to get hit with that $6 billion spending cut should the initiative fail.

“I can’t wait for a great solution. We need help now,” Jones says.

Like many Californians, Jones feels the state’s wealthiest should kick in more to help the state and to get the school system back on track. “I’m all about shared responsibility,” she say,  “but there’s been a lot of responsibility put on the lower class and the middle class. So at this point we’re already struggling.”

Because the outcomes of these initiatives are so critical for education, a growing number of parents and educators are urging a yes vote on both.

However, only one can win — because Prop. 30 and 38 would increase the income tax on Californians. The state’s constitution views that as a conflict, so only the measure with the most votes can prevail.

And state taxpayer groups, of course, don’t want either one to succeed. They believe that giving more money to government simply encourages out-of-control spending. Here’s a chart of how much more Californians would pay under Prop 30 and Prop 38, respectively. The data is from the LAO; the dollar amounts represent the marginal tax rate for single-file taxpayers…

Listen to Ana Tintocalis’ story:

Update Oct 30: Here’s a great infographic comparing the two propositions, from EdSource. Click on the image to see the full graphic.

Public schools in Oakland are looking for major kitchen remodeling with a measure on the November ballot.

If approved, Measure J would authorize the Oakland Unified School District to issue up $475 million in bonds to improve school facilities.

Along with seismic upgrades and lead-paint removal, the bonds could help underwrite a planned overhaul of kitchen facilities in the district, including building a new central kitchen in West Oakland. It’s part of an ongoing effort to improve the food the district serves to students, some 70 percent of whom are eligible for free or reduced-priced meals.

Oakland has made strides toward serving healthier and fresher food in recent years. For instance, the district now buys more fresh fruits and vegetables from within 250 miles of Oakland. There are salad bars at 67 schools.

But it’s infrastructure, not ingredients, that’s become the biggest barrier to making lunches healthier and tastier. Many schools have antiquated kitchens — if they have a kitchen at all.

“It’s a very attractive museum of kitchen dinosaurs,” said Zenobia Barlow, executive director of the Center for Ecoliteracy, a nonprofit advocacy group.

The facilities limit what food can be served.

“A lot of what is served is processed and prepackaged and frozen,” said Ruth Woodruff, who has a first-grader and a fourth-grader attending Chabot Elementary School. “It gets unwrapped and put on trays and heated.”

Sandra Miranda, a food services worker with the Oakland Unified School District, hands out free breakfasts to high school students at Monroe Academy as part of the district's "universal breakfast" program. (Noah Berger: Bay Citizen)

Some schools, like Piedmont Avenue Elementary, don’t even have a kitchen. Meals there are reheated in the corner of a multipurpose room.

“That’s not sufficient for them to be able to provide appetizing meals,” said Jody London, president of the school board, who is running for re-election. “It’s the difference between cooking on a hotplate and cooking on a stove.”

Meals are cooked on-site at 25 of the 89 schools in the district. The others do no cooking, just reheating, according to a study of food service in Oakland schools conducted last year by the Center for Ecoliteracy.

The district’s 2012 Facilities Master Plan – which the school board approved in May — calls for $43.6 million to renovate and build new kitchens in the district over the next decade.

About $19.1 million would go to build a new central kitchen, or Central Commissary, at the Foster education complex in West Oakland, which currently is used as an administrative office. There also are plans to use about 1.5 acres at that site to develop a farm and garden for the district.

“My vision is to have future urban farmers of America and let students know what it is really like to raise a chicken or a goat, and really get students connected back to where their food comes from,” said Jennifer LeBarre, the district’s director of nutrition services.

The facilities plan also calls for $14 million for 14 new community kitchens, where the public could use school cooking facilities for educational or vocational purposes. An additional $10.5 million would be used to renovate other school kitchens.

“Once you make these changes in the infrastructure, you’re going to be improving the health of the school-age population in Oakland in perpetuity,” Barlow said.

Currently, three central kitchens in the district prepare 73 percent of meals served to students – 6.6 million meals a year, according to the plan. And while the workload has increased, the facilities have not kept pace. One of those central kitchens, at Prescott Elementary School, now makes 20,000 meals a day in a kitchen designed to serve 8,000 a day.

If the Central Commissary were built, ingredients would be delivered, prepped and cooked there. Then they would be transported in hotel pans to schools for cafeteria workers to finish the dishes.

“Instead of getting individually pre-wrapped pizza, they’d get whole-grain pizza shells, sauce, cheese, toppings and then they would make the pizza there and cook it there at the schools,” LeBarre said.

Making school food healthier and tastier has become a priority in Oakland, as more children rely on their schools as a major source of calories.

Thanks to federal subsidies, some of the district’s children from low-income families now are served five meals a day at school – two snacks, breakfast, lunch and dinner. This month, the district expects to serve those five meals to about 3,000 kids, LeBarre said.

“I think that there is a moral obligation to make this the highest-quality food possible,” said Woodruff, a co-founder of the Oakland School Food Alliance, a parents group.

Nationally, school lunches are getting healthier. Under new federal nutrition standards that went into effect at the beginning of this school year, students must be offered both fruits and vegetables every day of the week. School lunches also are required to offer more whole grains.

But Oakland is trying to do more than just meet those requirements by doing more scratch cooking and serving fresher foods.

If Oakland voters approve the bond measure, which must receive 55 percent of the vote to pass, the school board would decide how the funds would be allocated. Four of the seven seats on the school board are up for election in November.

There is no organized opposition to Measure J, though it could fail if Oakland property owners don’t want to pay the taxes to fund it. If the measure passes, the district estimates that homeowners could pay a maximum rate of $60 per $100,000 of their houses’ valuations.

This story was produced by The Bay Citizen, a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting. Learn more at www.baycitizen.org.

Gov. Jerry Brown speaks at L.A. City Hall on the state budget earlier this year. (Kevork Djansezian: Getty Images)

Gov. Jerry Brown has been blazing the campaign trail for Proposition 30 for several weeks now. It’s his big play to bring in new revenue, and he’s lined up a lot of support to pay for campaign ads that begin Wednesday. People and organizations have ponied up more than $41 million to back Prop. 30. Brown warns that without the added revenue, California schools would face something like financial Armageddon. That’s a message he served up at an August visit to San Francisco’s James Lick Middle School.

“If people say ‘no, we don’t want to tax the most rewarded and blessed among us, we want to close schools,’” he told the crowd, “okay, I’ll manage as best as we can. But I will tell you, and I’m telling you the truth, everything I’ve seen in my lifetime tells me that schools need more money.”

The “blessed people” Brown refers to are California’s highest earners. Under Prop. 30, they would see their income taxes go up for seven years. But it’s not just the wealthy who would be asked to chip in. Everyone who makes a purchase in California would have to pay an additional quarter-cent sales tax for four years. This year’s state’s budget assumes Prop. 30 will pass and billions of dollars of new revenue will flow into state coffers. But H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the State Department of Finance, says if voters reject the measure, significant cuts are coming — and fast.

“We still have an obligation to maintain spending close to the revenue we take in. So the legislature preapproved a package of so-called trigger cuts, reductions in state spending that would automatically take effect on January the first of next year,.” Palmer says.

Those trigger cuts would slice $5.4 billion from K-12 schools and community colleges this fiscal year — that’s equal to about three weeks of the school year. Palmer says it would also force cuts at California’s public universities.

“The CSU’s Board of Trustees approved a contingent 5 percent fee increase on their students at CSU if Proposition 30 does not pass. And that would be about $150 that they would have to pay.”

The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates Prop. 30 would raise about $6 billion a year for the next four years. That would go into a special education fund, which would in turn free up money for the state to spend on other needs. Based on the way California calculates education funding, Prop. 30 is expected to give schools $2-3 billion more than they get now.

A lesser known piece of Prop. 30 is its impact on public safety. The measure would guarantee funding for counties that are managing state prisoners under the new realignment program, which is meant to ease crowding in state prisons.

Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail — like jails across California — is getting realignment funds from the state. The money pays for things like probation officers, jail beds and security guards. At Santa Rita, the funds make it possible for prisoners to attend classes.

Santa Rita Jail has a growing number of so-called “local state prisoners,” and they stay far longer than typical county inmates, according to Lt. M. Ditzenberger, inmate services manager for the jail. She says that as the number of prisoners grows, funding from the state is crucial to keep services going.

“We don’t want [inmates] going back to the streets without a GED diploma, or some sort of employability training,” she says. “We want them to reintegrate back into the communities from which they came.”

Prop. 30′s supporters say that between school funding and public safety, there’s a lot riding on the measure. But critics have seized on recent events like the state parks scandal and the ballooning cost of high speed rail as proof that the state can’t be trusted with additional tax dollars. Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

“We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” Coupal says. “And we misspend, we misallocate … like on a toy train that we cannot afford, and we should direct those funds towards California’s higher priorities, which are public safety and education.”

But Gov. Brown argues that without more revenue, there is no way to avoid painful cuts. Dan Schnur, Director of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, says the governor’s argument might be persuasive.

“If you tell people pay higher taxes cause it’s a good thing and the nice thing and the generous thing to do, that’s a tough political message to sell, Schnur says. “Invariably, when these types of measures pass, it’s because people who don’t like paying higher taxes are concerned that the alternative is something even worse.”

Recent polls show the measure’s approval hovering just above 50 percent.

Listen to Erika Kelly’s story on The California Report:

Learn More:

Gov. Brown Makes A Case for Prop. 30