Comment: "Measure K Was Horribly Written"

The funding and quality of local public schools continued to generate a large number of reader comments this past week, particularly in response to two stories, "" and "." And a new topic – enforcement of the law against "wrong way" parking – also sparked extensive and sharp exchanges of reader views on two articles, "" and "" 

Selected as Comment of the Week was one posted on the parcel tax article by Carl Lumma, who addressed the relatively less examined question of how well Measure K, the recently defeated parcel tax for the West Contra Costa Unified School District, was crafted.

Carl Lumma:

Sorry I missed the meeting. Is there no official forum for public comment on the web somewhere?

I live in Kensington and thought Measure K was horribly written. I will never vote for a parcel tax that exempts seniors (or any other special group), and never for a parcel tax so vague about how funds would be used.

I see a lot of who-said-what above, but very little talk about how money might actually be used to *improve education* for our kids. In fact, throughout the whole row, the only thing I've heard that can reasonably be correlated to education quality is class size, and even there I saw no specific information on expected class sizes with and without Measure K.

One question I would like to have asked the board is: Given unlimited funds for hiring teachers, what class sizes (defined as full-time teachers per child per grade in the district) could be supported by our current infrastructure? In other words, how low could we go if money weren't an object?

After Measure K failed, Ramsey made comments about kicking Pinole and Hercules out of the district. I found this deplorable.

• Editor's note: We welcome reader comments on our articles. The Comment of the Week doesn't necessarily reflect the view of El Cerrito Patch. It's chosen according to what we believe will be of general reader interest. For other examples from our Comment of the Week series, please click .