The Santa Monica College community is still celebrating the passage of Proposition 30 on Tuesday. SMC students, faculty, and classified employees had joined with college administrators to encourage people to vote ‘yes’ on Nov. 6.
Prop. 30 passed with 53.9 percent ‘yes’ votes.
The passage translates to increased personal income tax for the next seven years for anyone earning more than $250,000. California sales and use tax will also increase by ¼ cent for four years.
K-12 schools will receive 89 percent of the temporary tax revenues while the other 11 percent will go to community colleges.
With certainty that funding will be in place for important resources, SMC faculty and administrators are finally moving forward with planning for the spring 2013 semester.
If Prop 30 had failed, administrators were ready to go forward with a schedule that would have cut 500 classes compared to last spring, and would have displaced thousands of students taking lower division courses.
Failure of the proposition would have also lead to layoffs of hundreds of part-time faculty and furloughs for support staff.
“In voting yes on prop 30, voters recognized the value of education and they agree that the path to prosperity is through an educated workforce,” said SMC Faculty Association president, Mitra Moassessi.
With disaster averted at SMC and statewide at other community colleges, educators can now focus on teaching students and helping them earn degrees that will help get California’s economy back on track, Moassessi said.
