San Mateo / Foster City Mail-in Ballot Coming for Measure Y

In 2010 local voters approved a parcel tax, Measure A, to help fund local elementary and middle schools in the San Mateo / Foster City School District (SMFCSD).  This tax provides $7,000,000 in funding each year and expires this coming June if we do not vote to renew it.

Consequently the SMFCSD board voted recently to put Measure Y, which is the proposed renewal of Measure A, onto a special mail-in only ballot.  These ballots will be mailed to registered voters beginning on February 27th and must be postmarked by election day, March 28th.  Please see voting details at the Yes on Y website.

If you are not registered to vote, the deadline is March 13th for this election.

I have written several articles on this blog about local teacher salary issues.  Measure Y is critical to maintain current levels of funding, but will not solve the salary problems that I am trying to address (another article on that issue will be coming soon – I have been both very busy and also ill recently).

However, if Measure Y does not pass the status quo will become substantially worse, so I strongly encourage everyone to back this issue and make sure that you return your mail-in ballot promptly.

Rachel Jordan in the Highlands is the local parent volunteer for Highlands Elementary to help raise awareness and support for Measure Y, and I have invited her to contribute additional information regarding the initiative.

UPDATE (added 13 Feb at 9:35 AM):  Please see Rachel’s comment below on efforts to promote the initiative.

Author: David Kristofferson

Retired Ph.D. scientist, teacher (after retiring from industry, taught in private and public high schools and then worked a decade in my own private tutoring business), bioinformatician (managed both the NIH-funded GenBank National Nucleic Acid Sequence Databank and the BIONET National Computer Resource for Molecular Biology), IT director at Eos and Raven Biotechnologies, software product manager, AAAS Fellow, avid cyclist, and backpacker! View all posts by David Kristofferson