How many times have you been in the Visual and Performing Arts Center? And how often have you had to change course, cover your ears, come late to class, or cough out a lungful of dust due to the construction on campus in the past few quarters? And how many classes have you been denied a place in?
If your experience is anything like ours, your response to the latter questions will probably not only be a bigger number value, but also a more personally significant one. Measure C bonds are clearly transforming our campus, and many of us are grateful to local voters for allowing us the privilege (in the form of funds) to modernize our campus. Others are shocked: We have money for this, but not enough funds to keep our classes from being cut and our staff from being laid off. The unfortunate catch in the legislature surrounding the generosity of our voters is that Measure C bond money is restricted to areas such as building new buildings.
Not only is there a problem with an imbalance of abundance (no money for classes, but lots of money for buildings barely anyone uses), but the way this money is distributed guarantees us problems in the future. Bond money may also not be used to maintain the new buildings we are erecting. In addition, there is a possibility that by this time next quarter, the entirety of our campus will be cared for and kept in order by a grand total of four custodians. Are these folks getting a raise?
De Anza is doing an excellent job, as we illustrate in this issue, of steering our campus toward increasing sustainability, both environmentally and, by extension, fiscally. But no amount of saving resources is going to face down the issue that the new buildings will also develop signs of age. Meanwhile, more and more students will be crowding into these buildings daily, and fewer and fewer funds will be available to accommodate all of them in classrooms.
It’s not news to anyone that the district is in need of money. It’s a recurring theme in education, and we acknowledge it as such. It’s possible that the reason we get bond money and not money for paying instructors is that people are generally afraid of taxes, but bonds seem more manageable, despite the fact that they are loans which will eventually need to be repaid, with interest. However, as part of the De Anza student body, we ask our extremely generous voters who recently decided to gift us with the financial means to modernize our campus, to consider passing legislature for taxes. Taxes might be intimidating, but it’s also intimidating to have a campus full of students who have been turned away from a class more often than they have been inside our brand new buildings.
