Free Republic

Though more local school bonds are passing, voter support for these measures is in decline. This seeming contradiction can be understood by looking at the impact of Proposition 39 passed by voters in 2000. That year, a small group of multimillionaires and billionaires, most from the Silicon Valley, spent more than $60 million on a campaign to lower the vote threshold for the passage of local school bonds that only property owners are obligated to repay. The two-thirds vote for local bonds was established in the California Constitution of 1879 in recognition of the fact that not everyone who voted...

Occidental College President Theodore R. Mitchell, a politically connected education expert credited with reinvigorating his Los Angeles campus over the past six years, said Tuesday that he would step down Sept. 1. Mitchell, 49, is leaving the private liberal arts college to become chief executive of NewSchools Venture Fund, a nonprofit group based in San Francisco. NewSchools, founded in 1998 by a group including Silicon Valley venture capitalists John Doerr and Brook Byers, has invested $40 million in efforts to improve public education in urban areas. Mitchell said he decided to take the job at NewSchools because "there is a...