Beikoku and Eikoku.

This is a second in a series of posts, about where the State of California is headed.

The first is here. In that post, I took a look at the Nordic countries of Europe, and how their high quality governments arose out of a history of difficult geography and benign history.  I noted that California has a similarly difficult geography and benign history, and that California has dealt with those challenges through a series of "big projects," the ultimate example of which is California's Master Plan for Education. Yet while both the Nordics and California have enjoyed subsequent economic success, they have developed very different levels of trust in government.  To try to understand why California's culture has developed differently, I looked for a foil to California, a place with technical sophistication and high levels of education that is nonetheless suffering from economic stagnation -- a description that fits Japan.

"Cherry blossoms at Hirosaki Castle, Japan"

available at http://tinyurl.com/pd98khc

Pretty much anyone growing up in the 1980s who was interested in economics and history spent a good deal of time looking at Japan.  No-one considers Japan a model today; after 1989, Japan fell into a seemingly endless slump.  However, this may have recently changed, given that Shinzō Abe's government appears to be having some success.  

Most economic analysts agree that Japan's situation is different from Europe's (Japan is no Greece) -- despite a national debt that stands at close to 250% of GDP, the debt is nearly entirely held domestically, and interest rates remain near the zero lower bound. 

Instead, Japanese stagnation is attributed to culture.  For instance, Abe is Japan’s first leader to treat entrepreneurs as something more than "greedy hustlers." As the Economist notes, "Venture-capital firms have few big payoffs to look forward to, with the result that there is a limited pool of cash available for those who do want to have a go at starting a business." But then the editors looked at another factor entirely -- the cultural obstacles to creating startups -- a factor that made me do a double-take:

"Wives, mothers and mothers-in-law exert a strong influence on men not to join risky start-ups ... [t]he success of the big firms born in Japan’s great period of post-war entrepreneurialism ... discouraged graduates from joining newer ventures ... [as a result] [e]xperienced managers are seldom keen to leave large companies."

What? In California, wives, mothers and mothers-in-law run start-ups. In Japan, am I to believe that the influence of these same individuals is limited to advising sons and husbands concerning their careers, rather than participating themselves in the economy?  That cannot be correct. Educational statistics suggest Japanese women are some of the most educated in the world. Surely, that education gives them opportunities that they are motivated by the culture of their schools to deploy in the world at large.

"Gender Gap in Median Earnings, Full-Time Employees"
Gender Brief, OECD Social Policy Division, March 2010
available at http://tinyurl.com/pqzhsvn

I was, of course, totally wrong.

Japan is nearly at the bottom of the rankings in the 2012 Global Gender Gap Report -- it was number 101 out of 135. Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and Bangladesh all do better, for Japan is one of the industrialized world's least equal countries. Writing recently in the New York Times, Laura Tyson noted how comprehensively Japan's economy has been hobbled culturally:

"... [s]trong cultural norms value stay-at-home mothers. Tax distortions reinforce these norms and penalize two-worker households. Long working hours with overtime requirements make it difficult to balance work and family responsibilities. Child-care services are in acute short supply. There are long waiting lists for public child care, and a limited number of private providers because of burdensome regulations ... [w]omen are often caught in a Catch 22: they cannot secure a job until a child-care slot is available, and they are not eligible for such a slot until they have a job ...  about 70 percent of Japanese women leave the work force after their first child. Only about 33 percent of Japanese mothers with young children work, compared with 50 to 60 percent in the United States, Britain and Germany, and 75 percent in Sweden ... [m]ost of the Japanese women who quit work for family responsibilities want to rejoin the work force but have a hard time doing so and face serious penalties in future wages and promotions."

This failure (I don't know what else to call it) of Japanese culture to engage women in the workplace is all the more peculiar given Japan's well known devotion to hard work, and further, given the extraordinary flexibility demonstrated by Japanese culture over time.  From the end of Kaikin (Sakoku) with the arrival of the Kurofune, through the Meiji Restoration and into the Taishō period, Japan demonstrated exceptional cultural adaptability -- with this glaring exception.

"Black Ships and Samurai"

MIT Visualizing Cultures

 available at http://tinyurl.com/yckc5jl

There are any number of factors grounded in the Japanese cultural experience that can explain this issue, but there is an element of the Japanese view of the world, as expressed through language, that I find particularly interesting on this point. It comes down to two specific sets of kanji characters.

The first is 米国, or Beikoku. The character 米, as a noun, generally means "rice," while the character 国 means "country." Combined, in Japanese, they mean "The United States."

There are a lot of explanations offered for this, but one suggested by Bill Emmott in his book "20:21 Vision" is that the Japanese chose this name for America in 1853, at the time of the Perry Expedition, and that the name is meant by the Japanese quite literally.  Indeed, it is Emmott's view that America was (and was expected by the Japanese to continue to be) primarily a nation of farmers. (Yes, smart people can make serious mistakes.)

But the even more interesting piece of kanji is 英国, or Eikoku.  The character 英, as an adjective, generally means outstanding, fine, or bright, and the second character, as in Beikoku, means "country."

That is the Japanese name for "England."

The Palace of Westminster
Image available at http://tinyurl.com/nk3s3o3

Emmott (whose credentials as a journalist on Japan are exceptional) argues the name was adopted in the late 19th century, when the Japanese thought that what is our modern day United Kingdom was the country to be (and, probably, to beat). When Japan sought to modernize, in many respects, its model was Anglophilic -- for example, in 1870, an Imperial decree determined that the Royal (British) Navy should be the model for Japanese naval development, and the British model became the foundation of naval officer training and education. To this day, Anglophilia remains common in Japan -- for instance, both Crown Prince Naruhito, and his wife, Princess Masako, did postgraduate work at Oxford.

However, it is not the industrial spirit of the UK that appears to hold a cultural attraction for Japan.  Instead, as one (rather popular) Japanese author, Nozomu Hayashi, has argued, the Japanese are drawn mostly to England's traditional attractions. Roast beef. Country houses. Patchwork quilts.  The Japanese are not enamored of the England of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist or Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, but instead look to the England of Julian Fellowes' Downton Abbey.

Jessica Brown Findley, Laura Carmichael, Michelle Dockery
"Downton Abbey to Return For Fourth Series"
The Daily Telegraph, November 23, 2012
Image available at http://tinyurl.com/bp67eqe

And this is one of the great peculiarities of the modern United Kingdom, and brings me to the end of this post, while pointing in the direction of the next.  For, while internationally, the romantic country life of England retains its appeal, the impact of that yearning in the UK itself, for an arcadian rural society, has been a source of intense debate and criticism. That ideal has been blamed for holding back the United Kingdom from fully realizing the benefits of modern society.  It is that ideal that has been held responsible for the preference by the commercial and industrial classes of the UK for sending their children to private schools where "the sons of businessmen were looked down upon and science was barely taught," that finds its start in the 1850s if not earlier. The ideal arguably reached its denouement with the collapse of James Callaghan's Labour government in 1979, and with the elevation to Prime Minister of a scientist -- a chemist, who specialized in x-ray crystallography -- with a prior portfolio as Secretary of State for Education and Science.

For it is to Margaret Thatcher and the UK that I turn to next. But again, a post for another day.

Nordic Success.

"International: The Lottery of Life"
The Economist, November 21, 2012
available at http://tinyurl.com/bvp45uj

From time to time I take on blogging topics that are bigger than a single post. A friend asked me a couple of months ago "where do you think California is headed?" That's definitely one such topic, and this post is the start of an effort to answer that question.

When thinking about California's future, it's not unusual to draw comparisons concerning the recent experiences of other countries. In such conversations, the "Nordic" countries of Europe -- Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark -- usually get discussed. I don't think these are ultimately the most relevant international comparisons, but they're not a bad place to start.

The Economist recently ranked Switzerland as the best place to be born in the world in 2013. Their survey of the country in 2004 pointed out why -- for a small, landlocked country of 7 million, the Swiss have done well.  The country is known for democracy, fairness, stability, quality, meticulousness, punctuality, thrift, efficiency, openness, reliability (whether a watch or a bank), good hotels, and great chocolate.

Indeed, all the Nordic countries do well in the Economist's rankings. The Economist ranked countries in the world in 2012 on competitiveness, and, surprise of surprises, Sweden is the top of the list, followed by the four other Nordics.

"Lessons: The Secret of Their Success"

The Economist, February 2, 2013 

available at http://tinyurl.com/mybjbkk 

"Why has this remote, thinly populated region, with its freezing winters and expanses of wilderness, proved so successful?" asked the editors?

There was one factor in these countries' success that stood out, at least to me, and which is relevant to the future of California.  The Economist noted that a key feature in the success of each of these countries is the quality of their governments:

"[T]he Nordic talent for government is sui generis. Nordic government arose from a combination of difficult geography and benign history. All the Nordic countries have small populations, which means that members of the ruling elites have to get on with each other. Their monarchs lived in relatively modest places and their barons had to strike bargains with independent-minded peasants and seafarers... [t]hey embraced liberalism early. Sweden guaranteed freedom of the press in 1766, and from the 1840s onwards it abolished preference for aristocrats in handing out top government jobs and created a meritocratic and corruption-free civil service ..."

Like the Nordics, California has had a combination of difficult geography and benign history.  California has, for practical purposes, not been a theatre of war since statehood in 1850, and the State was initially cut off from the rest of the United States, a problem addressed in degrees by the  Transcontinental Railroad, the Panama Canal, the Interstates, and the advent of cheap consumer air travel.  California's internal geography presents its own challenges, still not resolved.  Further, population growth was, is, and will continue to be constrained by water shortages, notwithstanding the construction of massive dams and aqueducts.

Sather Tower, UC Berkeley, with view of San Francisco.

Image available at http://tinyurl.com/mxqg3mf

California's history of "big projects," I (and a lot of other people) would argue, led to the creation of what the State calls its "Master Plan" for education.  Starting in 1960, the State essentially decided that cheap (indeed, oftentimes free) higher education would be available to everyone. The effect of the Master Plan has been profound -- I have no problem agreeing with the assertion that California's economic dynamism results from the implementation of the Master Plan. Indeed, the Master Plan (despite its faults) has been a sterling example of the success of California's government.

California has also ended up with a liberalism that, at first glance, appears similar to if not the same as that of the Nordics.  I don't generally think it's necessary to pull examples to support that argument, but here are a couple of strong data points. Yet this is where the comparison with the Nordics starts to break down.  The Economist argues that the experiences of the Nordics had an important cultural impact, which makes them different from many other countries to this day:

 "The combination of geography and history has provided Nordic governments with two powerful resources: trust in strangers and belief in individual rights ... Economists say that high levels of trust result in lower transaction costs—there is no need to resort to American-style lawsuits or Italian-style quid-pro-quo deals in order to get things done. But its virtues go beyond that. Trust means that high-quality people join the civil service. Citizens pay their taxes and play by the rules. Government decisions are widely accepted." 

This does not describe the popular perception of California. There are few people that would agree that California, in the last 40 years, has been a place high in trust in strangers.  The State, in general, has very high quality civil servants (per the Economist, "it has never paid to bet against a state with as many inventive people as California"), but the voters of the State nonetheless undertook an effort to write tax avoidance into law. And California became an example of the most litigious State in America.

To try to understand how California enjoys a similar economic dynamism to the Nordics, but not their cultural advantages, it seems to make some sense to look for California's foil.  That country would be a place every bit as technically advanced as California, that has similar cultural advantages to the Nordics, but at the same time, would be a country that would (tragically) lack economic dynamism.  Sadly, there is such a place in the world.  Since 1990, that country has been Japan.

And that is a post for another day.

Sonoma County's Pyrrhic Victory on Redevelopment.

The Sacramento County Superior Court has issued its tentative ruling concerning whether the Highway 12 and Roseland Village redevelopment projects are (were?) enforceable obligations, and whether the County's "Successor" Agency is entitled to have ~$2.2 million returned.

I think it'd be easy to conclude that the County won, because the tentative ruling is that the projects are enforceable obligations.  But it doesn't take 11 pages to say someone won and someone lost if it's clear.

Charles Dickens had a
thought or two about
legal Pyrrhic Victories.

As you'd expect, the County gets its bad news at the end of the tentative ruling, because the Court found that the County has not met its burden to show that it is entitled to reimbursement. Further, the "administrative expenses" that the County claimed didn't pass muster.

The Court does note that the County may have self-help remedies it could try to use to obtain the approximately $2.2 million redistributed to the "taxing entities." However, I think the Court is well aware that the "taxing entities" here are not faceless. Most of the $2.2 million the County seeks would merely be money moved from one County pocket to another -- with one important exception. When redevelopment ended, 34% of the dollars at issue for the Highway 12 project went to Sonoma Valley's schools -- in this case, probably about $400,000 (about another $400,000 went to schools in Roseland due to the Roseland Village project).

There are any number of ways to try to conceal that basic point, but the "bonus" money funding redevelopment was always coming from somewhere, and school budgets are that place, given Sonoma Valley's basic aid status.

The idea that the Court is going to order Sonoma Valley's schools to pay a $400,000 "reimbursement" to the County of Sonoma is ridiculous. As a practical matter, the Court is just not going to do that, if only due to the consistent failure of the State to meet its Prop. 98 constitutional funding requirements for years on end. Which means the County's suit was pretty much pointless, if the tentative ruling (you can read it here and the final ruling will be here) stands.

34 Cents of Your Property Tax Dollar Goes To Our Schools.

So, this post is about increasing the resources available to Sonoma's public schools. There's background here and here. Due to Sonoma Valley's basic aid status, local property tax revenue controls our school funding, and 34 cents of every new property tax dollar goes to our schools.

The Lodge at Sonoma

image available at http://tinyurl.com/mg2dku9 

This post is a long one, and it's in four parts.  The first part explains a bit of the history of school finance since 1971.  The second explains the impact of redevelopment.  The third part describes how property tax revenues can increase.  The fourth gives an example of a specific project, The Lodge At Sonoma -- for were the Lodge to be built today, the school district would get nearly $100,000 each year in additional revenue.

Because of the dramatic impact of property taxes on local schools, this issue should come up in every planning decision made by the City of Sonoma. 

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"Education is a unique influence on a child's development as a citizen and his [or her] participation in political and community life ... '[t]he pivotal position of education to success in American society and its essential role in opening up to the individual the central experiences of our culture lend it an importance that is undeniable' ... [e]ducation is the lifeline of both the individual and society." Serrano v. Priest (1971), 5 Cal.3d 584 (Serrano I)

California State Supreme Court Chambers.

image available at http://tinyurl.com/k3ewj4k

In 1971, by far, the major source of school revenue was the local real property tax. The amount of revenue a district could raise depended largely on its tax base -- on the assessed valuation of real property within its borders. Then the California State Supreme Court ruled in Serrano v. Priest (1971), 5 Cal.3d 584 (Serrano I), finding that the funding scheme invidiously discriminated against the poor because it made the quality of a child's education a function of the wealth of his parents and neighbors.

The California Legislature responded by establishing a formula that calculates a ceiling on how much local property tax revenue each district should receive. If a K-12 district's local property tax revenue is not sufficient to meet this "revenue limit," the state provides additional funds up to that level. Today, we call most of the ~1,000 school districts in California "revenue limit" districts, because this formula applies to them, and their funding is determined by a (heavily modified) variant of the system created in response to Serrano I. 

The courts ultimately approved the State's plan, which continued to allow a relatively small number of districts to retain a higher level of funding, based on well-above-average local property taxes.  The rub was that if there was other State aid those districts were to receive, that aid would be reduced, dollar for dollar, by the amount that local property taxes exceeded the revenue limit.  These districts became known as "basic aid" districts, a term that comes from the State Constitutional requirement that all students receive a minimum level of state aid, defined as $120 per pupil, regardless of how much local property tax revenue their district receives.

Thus, we ended up with a naming system whereby the "revenue limit" districts are poorer than the "basic aid" districts.  Which is a wonderfully delightful piece of counterintuitive nomenclature.

The initial number of basic aid districts was small -- places like Pasadena and Beverly Hills. In the intervening decades, the number of basic aid districts has continued to increase, to the point now where nearly 15% of all districts are basic aid, and some of those districts are quite large indeed.  After forty years of trying to equalize school funding, places like Sonoma find themselves right back where they were before Serrano I -- that they are entirely dependent on local property tax revenue -- and for such districts, the exception has swallowed the rule.

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For nearly a generation, local property taxes were essentially irrelevant to school funding in Sonoma Valley.  This was not merely due to the consequences of Serrano I.  Redevelopment also played its part.

As California's Legislative Analyst points out, prior to the dissolution of redevelopment agencies in 2011, most of the growth in property taxes from redevelopment project areas went to the redevelopment agency, rather than other local governments like school districts. In Sonoma, this meant that any significant commercial development, most of which took place inside city limits, almost always saw the increased property tax revenue redirected exclusively to the City of Sonoma, rather than SVUSD.

I don't think that any local leaders were intending that the consequence of this policy would be that the School District would thereby qualify for additional State assistance as a revenue limit district, but that was the actual consequence.

Along came ABX1 26 in 2011, which dissolved all redevelopment agencies. Under the dissolution process, the property tax revenue that formerly went to redevelopment agencies is first used to pay off redevelopment debts and obligations, and the remainder is distributed to local governments, and the school districts receive their share.

When redevelopment went "boom," this was thus a stark change.  It's difficult to point out just how significant the change was.  Indeed, many individuals who are quite knowledgeable regarding California's school system had no idea at all how much property tax was being diverted from the schools through the use of redevelopment, and City officials themselves hotly disputed that money was being redirected away from schools at all -- a point that is now nearly universally recognized to have been incorrect.

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I've touched on the importance of increased funding for schools in previous posts here and here.  Because local property tax revenue controls school funding for Sonoma Valley due to the district's basic aid status, more revenue depends on increasing local property tax revenue.

How can that happen?  California's Legislative Analyst, as usual, has a nice explanation.  There are three mechanisms -- recently sold properties, newly improved (or newly built) properties, and then Proposition 8 "decline in value" properties.

• When a property sells, its assessed value resets to the purchase price. This represents additional value that is added to the tax base because the sale price of the property is often much higher than its previous assessed value. 
• Newly built property and property improvements add new value to the county's tax base when new construction takes place or improvements are made — mainly additions, remodels, and facility expansions — because structures are assessed at market value the year that they are built. 
• Finally, Proposition 8 "decline in value" properties contribute significantly to growth or decline in a county's tax base because their assessed values may increase or decrease dramatically in any year. A particularly large impact on assessed valuation tends to occur in years when a large number of these properties transfer from Proposition 13 assessment to reduced assessment (due to falling real estate prices) and vice versa in a rising market.

What do these changes in revenue look like, and how can someone determine how much property tax revenue will change?  The San Francisco Chronicle has a nice overview of calculating the numbers for a home purchase, and the rules generally hold up for commercial properties, too.  If you pick a typical Sonoma Valley tax revenue area (TRA), like, say, 006-032 (which covers part of the City of Sonoma), the rate's easily determinable by checking Sonoma County's table here. 

There's one piece of data that I've not been able to find, though, and that's the portion allocated to each entity of the property tax collected.  If a reader happens to know where Sonoma County's put that data, please forgive this bleg and let me know. 

However, the number (ratio) is not too difficult to determine for a particular entity for a particular year.  For Sonoma Valley Unified, the numerator is the property tax received for a particular year (in 2012-13, that appears to have been $25,176,110).  The denominator is the total assessed value of all real property in the school district ($7,176,806,784) multiplied by the rate (1.108800%). 31.44% of each property tax dollar thus ends up going to SVUSD.

"Allocation of Ad Valorem Property Tax Revenue"
"Understanding California's Property Taxes"
California Legislative Analyst
available at http://tinyurl.com/ljkr59b

That's not the end of the story.  As the Legislative Analyst's graph on the right shows, about 40% of property tax revenue is allocated to K-14 (not K-12) education; about 8% of every property tax dollar heads to the Santa Rosa Junior College.

Further, there's another 8% marked as "redevelopment," which is ending.  The school district will end up with about 3/9ths of that money.

When redevelopment is wrapped up, the school district will therefore receive ~34% of each property tax dollar.

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So how much money is at issue with a particular project?  Well, consider, for a moment, The Lodge At Sonoma. It's a good example, because the development is unitary -- it's on one piece of land for tax purposes -- and because its development was relatively recent (opening in 2000, IIRC).

The land that the Lodge sits on is valued at $7.2 million for property tax purposes, and the improvements (the structures) are valued at ~$19.2 million.  The total assessment is thus $26,387,300.   Knowing that the effective tax rate for the parcel is 1.108800%, we just multiply those two numbers and get $292,582.38 per year.  The official "bill" is $381,108.52, but that includes non-property tax water charges, among other things.

City of Sonoma GIS, APN 128-261-009
"The Lodge at Sonoma"
1325 Broadway, Sonoma CA
available at http://tinyurl.com/nxfz9rk  

So how much does the school district get? You'd think $91,987.90 if you just applied the rules I posted above. You'd be completely incorrect, but at least you'd have followed instructions properly.

The reason you'd be wrong is due to redevelopment.  As Bob Klose reported in the Press Democrat on June 14, 1998, the Lodge was built in part with money from the City of Sonoma's Redevelopment Agency. Thus, the entire increase in property tax went to the City of Sonoma.  The school district's share was limited to the assessed value of the parcel prior to the project.  I've looked at the records, and it looks like the assessed value of the parcel before the construction of the Lodge was $425,000.  The assessed value may have been higher than that due to some increase over time under Prop. 13, so call it $600,000 as an estimate.  The school district's share of the property tax collected is ~$2,091.64.

It is probably therefore unsurprising that people have rarely brought up the school district budget at planning commission meetings in the City of Sonoma.  But they probably should. Because were the Lodge to be built today, the school district would get approximately $100,000 each year.  That's equivalent to an Impact 100 donation every twelve months.

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A final point: because Preserving Sonoma is under discussion in town, I can certainly see how someone like Darius Anderson would try to use a post like this to his advantage. This post, though, is about more than the debate about any single project.  It's about a factor that's just not being weighed at all in the planning process in Sonoma. 

Because commercial development (and, increasingly, tourist-oriented development) is concentrated in the City of Sonoma, the impact on our schools of planning decisions in the long run is profound indeed. To paraphrase Serrano I, education is a unique influence on a child's development as a citizen and her or his participation in political and community life. The pivotal position of education to success in American society and its essential role in opening up to the individual the central experiences of our culture lend it an importance that is undeniable -- education is the lifeline of both the individual and society. Failing to consider education in the planning process is a disservice not least to our students, but to our entire Valley.  

Brown, Budgets, Prisons, and Contempt.

The enduring wild card in California's budget is the situation in California's prisons.  This one came up here in January and back in November. The failure of the Brown administration to regain control of California prison's mental health services (which came up in April twice) led most people to believe that the State's plan to deal with prison overcrowding would similarly fail when reviewed by the courts.

Thursday, the three judge panel supervising the State's reduction of prison overcrowding duly rejected the State's plan to deal with the problem. Jerry Brown narrowly avoided being held in contempt of court, but the panel made clear that, failure of the State to comply with the latest order "shall constitute an act of contempt."

Michael Bien

Image available at http://tinyurl.com/mmegjnc

It's interesting to contrast this case with the decisions that are expected in Perry v. Hollingsworth and Windsor v. United States (prior blog posts on that topic are here and here) on the 24th 26th of June. The consequences of the prison overcrowding litigation will easily be as far reaching as the Prop. 8 cases, and Michael Bien deserves a lot of credit for doggedly pursuing the issues for years.

The result in the prison overcrowding case also provides a nice explanation for an oddity that was in the back of my mind last week, when the Economist noted (with amazement) that Jerry Brown 2.0's conservatism was having unexpected consequences in dealing with California's budget:

"POLITICIANS seldom show the caution required of fiscal analysts. Revenue projections are too rosy, deficit targets are blithely missed and rash promises are lavished on voters. Yet last month California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, an independent fiscal monitor, rebuked the governor, Jerry Brown, for his 'unduly pessimistic' account of the state’s
economy. Mr Brown had predicted a $1.2 billion surplus for the coming fiscal year; the LAO put the figure at over $4.6 billion. This week the state’s leaders found themselves in the unusual position of agreeing a budget that did not include whopping cuts."

However, it makes perfect sense for the Governor to have been pessimistic -- the estimated amount necessary to address overcrowding by housing some prisoners out of state for 2013 is $1.9 billion.  The Governor and his advisors had to have known this kind of a ruling was coming, and that the difference between budgeted and projected revenues would probably need to be spent pursuant to the court order on reducing prison overcrowding ...

Soccer, And Astronauts, in Sonoma County.

One topic I return to from time to time is the unusual importance of soccer in Sonoma County.  For instance, back in December I noted that Sonoma County produces as many female Division I soccer players each year as you would expect of a city the size of Houston, Texas. 

The importance of producing exceptional female athletes is an easy thing to underestimate.  There are a number of national institutions where women are under-represented, and where such individuals can have a disproportionately positive impact. To name just a few of those institutions, I'd think, say, of the United States Naval Academy, the United States Marine Corps, the Stanford University Department of Mechanical Engineering, and NASA as candidates for the short list. 

The best, most recent example of how those soccer players can shake things up is Nicole Aunapu Mann, 35, a 1995 graduate of Rancho Cotate High School (Rohnert Park).  At the United States Naval Academy, she was a Trident Scholar, and was one of the most decorated women's soccer players in Patriot League history, serving as Navy's soccer team captain in her senior year, while being named Patriot League Defensive Player of the Year two-consecutive seasons by the league's coaches. In addition to her Patriot League accolades, she earned NSCAA All-Mid-Atlantic Region honors four-straight seasons.  Navy's premier defender, Aunapu's primary responsibility was to mark the opposition's top scorer. She anchored the Mids' defensive unit which set a school record with 14 shutouts in 1998 and was third in the nation for shutouts per game (0.67). The Navy defense was ranked eighth in the nation that season with its 0.56 goals-against average and allowed a league-low 12 goals, and Nicole Aunapu Mann was subsequently named to the Patriot League All-Decade Women's Soccer Team.

After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1999, she joined the United States Marine Corps as an F/A-18 pilot, and subsequently attended Stanford University, where she received her master's degree in mechanical engineering.  A test pilot for the Corps at Pauxtent, now-Major Nicole Aunapu Mann was selected today to serve as an astronaut by NASA.

Did soccer have anything to do with her success?  Here's her thoughts on the matter, from the Naval Academy Newsletter (2011, Issue 1, page 5):

"'Playing sports at the Academy forced you into situations where you had to learn leadership skills', Mann said. 'Getting ready to play a game equals the same kind of feeling I get before I fly. You're strapped into a 40,000-pound jet, headed for a mission over Iraq or Afghanistan. You're nervous and excited and it's game time. It's time to perform. Then, you take off and you're playing in the moment.'"

It bears repeating that you'd expect there to be a women's soccer magnet -- the equivalent of, say, Monongahela, Pennsylvania or Odessa, Texas.  The thing you might not expect (but probably should) would be the impact those women would have in their post-athletic careers ...

The LCFF Imperative.

For those of you referred by Lorna Sheridan's article on the Sonoma Index-Tribune's web site, the piece she references is located here.

Moving right along, one of the ongoing issues this year in California is the acronym "LCFF," which stands for "Local Control Funding Formula." Jerry Brown wanted to devote nearly all new tax revenue to schools, some of it to repay shortages in legally mandated levels of aid from past years and some to shift more money to districts with large numbers of poor and/or English-learner students. To quote Dan Walters, "[Brown] contends [it is] a moral imperative to help those disadvantaged students – Latino and black kids, mostly – catch up in academic achievement."

EdSource (a great web site) reported today that it appears there will be a compromise as part of the deadline to pass the California budget this week.

I've blogged about LCFF previously in February here and back in January here. As expected, wealthy suburban districts demanded changes (San Ramon Valley is the poster child in EdSource's article), and duly received them.  However, the change is still pretty good news.

"Complete District by District Breakdown"

Compromise Plan versus Pre-Recession (2007-08) 

California Department of Finance

available at http://tinyurl.com/kwkw9b4.

On the right is how Sonoma Valley Unified will fare under the plan. The table demonstrates exactly how important the concentration grant in the LCFF is; the threshold for the grant is 55%. For example. Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified, whose funding at the moment is roughly similar to SVUSD, and which is listed immediately below SVUSD on the chart, falls below the threshold, at 51%.  Sonoma Valley clears the hurdle, at 62%.

SVUSD will therefore receive a year-on-year increase in funding of $1,183 per student; Cotati-Rohnert Park's will be only $266. The difference will continue as overall funding rises through 2019-2020.  The total increase in the next fiscal year for SVUSD, under the plan anticipated to be passed this week, will amount to $4,826,640. 

Thank-you, Governor Brown.