Now that you’ve gotten the gig, its time to prep for class. There are a few things that you need to keep in mind as you are planning out your schedule and writing your syllabus.
First, most 4-year universities that I have attended have been a bit cavalier about class meetings, and class times. If you need to cancel class for a week, no problem. Need to end an hour or so early? Sure. This is a great way to get in trouble and not get hired back at a community college. You should expect to be teaching the whole time, every scheduled week. However, if there is a scheduled holiday on your class meeting time, congrats! You get the week off and still get paid! That’s the joy of LHE!
 
The other thing to keep in mind is that, for the most part, community colleges aren’t going to hold your hand. They are going to hire you and say, “Great! Class starts on Monday. Talk to this person to get your keys.” And then let you go. They will let you set up your class however you want (pro!) but don’t offer much guidance on what exactly you should be doing week-to-week (con!). To smooth over this transition, I’ve put a few resources in the “Teaching Resources” section of my website, including a general course-plan that I follow for my Intro to American Government class, and a sample syllabus.
 
The first thing you are going to want to tackle is creating your syllabus. This means we have to talk about Student Learning Outcomes, or SLO’s. When you are creating your syllabus, there are a number of things that you need to include. Ideally, your department chair should tell you what these are, but you can also find them in the Faculty Handbook you get as part of the on-boarding process. One of these things is the required Student Learning Outcomes. Every designed class (like Intro to American Government, Comparative Politics, Intro to Political Theory, etc) has a set of student learning outcomes, designed by the department and the school and registered with the state accreditation board. In an ideal world, these are designed as guides to the class and tell the student what they will be learning in your class. Practically, they are guidelines or benchmarks to meet and to record.
 
As an example, an SLO for an Intro to American class might look something like this: “At the conclusion of the course, students will be able to explain the civil liberties and civil rights of individuals as articulated in the U.S. Constitution and federal court decisions.”
 
As an instructor it is your job to keep track of how many students are meeting these SLO’s, and then it is the departments job to record these statistics and make them available for the state accreditation board. Departments can get in real trouble if they don’t keep these records, so expect to see a department chair stress out about SLO’s a lot.
How this usually works is that you need to present all of the SLO’s for your class in your syllabus (there is usually 4-5). And then at the beginning of the semester, the department chair will announce which one they are going to be tracking this semester. At the end of the semester you will be asked to say how many students attempted the SLO, and how many passed it. This usually involved a specific question on a test, or perhaps a writing assignment. You will have to say that you tested SLO by providing a specific question on your final exam, and then 40 students attempted the SLO, and 35 passed it by getting a grade of at least 7 points out of 10 on the question. Sometimes the departments will try to coordinate this, and everyone will track the same SLO using the same test question. Overall, you don’t need to worry about this when you are designing your class, except to be aware of it happening and to put the necessary language in your syllabus.
 
Additionally, you will want to put some very clear language about your class policies, including your policy on adding and dropping students in your syllabus. In my experience, you will have a lot more students trying to add, and a lot more students trying to drop your class, as compared to a 4 year institution. While not a strict contract, your syllabus represents your agreement with your students, and if there is any question about grading, or if a student tries to go over your head and cause problems (which has happened to me several times!) the dean is going to look at your syllabus first for language that will help them help you. I put a sample American Government syllabus in the “Teaching Resources” section of my website.
 
You should also think about what textbook you are going to require. I am a big fan of using low-cost or free textbooks, particularly the ones at OpenStax. Keep in mind that your students are at community college for a number of reasons, and one of them may be financial. More students may be working full-time than you expect! Doing what you can to lighten their financial burden will be much appreciated. I have also found that students who cannot afford a textbook often just try to go without. Making them buy an expensive textbook is merely rewarding those students who can afford it, and punishing those who cannot.
 
Before you go to your class on the first day you should do a number of things, here is a quick first-day of class checklist.

1. Submit your syllabus and class materials for printing. Most schools have a dedicated print-shop that will print anything you need. They generally have an email or an online form that you can use. However, they get quite busy at the beginning of the semester, so make sure you give them enough time. Submitting your syllabus about two weeks ahead of time will usually be enough.
2. Send your syllabus to the department chair or appropriate admin person. The school needs to keep a record of your syllabus. You will probably get a million emails about this from the appropriate person, but you can still forget (I know I do!)
3. Check your room location. Sometime schools have satellite campuses, or strange offshoots. Know where you are going and what building you are in.
4. Get your keys if you need them! Sometimes you will need to pick up keys for your classroom or faculty lounge.
5. Most schools have some sort of faculty lounge for full and part-time faculty. They usually have couches and desks with computers. They also often have nicer bathrooms than the rest of the school.
6. Print out your class roster. You will need to take attendance. I know, it feels like high school. But you have to drop anyone that didn’t show up. At least in California, community colleges get state money based on enrollment (like high schools) so you need to keep track of that. Do this early, but not too early. I have had schools where their internal servers get overloaded on the first day of class with everyone trying to add classes, or retrieve rosters, making it impossible to download and print a roster. A few days before seems to do the trick.
7. Decide on your add-drop policy. Will you add anyone who you can? How do you add students? Do you need to give them an Add Code on the day? Or can they request on later? I don’t recommend going above the cap for the class. It can get you in trouble with the admin and there often isn’t room. I usually ask students who are trying to add to raise their hand, and then make a judgement call. I also don’t give out add codes until the end of the class, in case anyone who is enrolled shows up late. You might need to print out a list of add-codes to bring to class too.
8. Class materials. Don’t expect the classrooms to have whiteboard markers or anything else. Some might, but it is safer to bring your own.

So, its July or early August and you’ve decided that you are prepared enough and you’d like to pick up a class or two for the fall semester. You go onto a website like cccregistry.org to look for open positions. When you do this, you probably notice two important things. First all of the jobs are described as “pool” positions, and second that there aren’t too many of them. This is because you are too late! If your grad school is like mine, they probably schedule you at the very last minute, telling you what you are teaching or TAing only a few weeks before school starts. This is not how the community college system works. They schedule classes nearly a full year ahead (it is November and I’ve already submitted my class requests for next fall!)
 
How do you actually get a job? Community colleges generally hire adjuncts for one of two reasons. First, their enrollment numbers are up so they got permission to add more classes in their next schedule. Second, some emergency happened and they need someone to teach a class for the upcoming semester very soon. Either way, they aren’t posting these openings on a job board at that time. Instead, what they like to do is to collect a “pool” of applications over time and then go through the applications that they already have on file and then call applicants. This is where it can be useful to have some connections. If you know someone who is already at a community college you should let them know you are applying. Ideally, this would be someone who is a full-timer at the school, but sometimes adjuncts can help out too! I’ve gotten a number of emails from department chairs at schools where I adjunct asking if I know anyone who can teach a class when there has been an emergency, or an unexpected opening. But in these situations the best scenario is that you have already submitted an application and I (or someone else) can say, “Yes! Check out this person, they have already submitted an application.”
 
What goes into an application? On average, they will require a resume/CV, a cover letter and transcripts. They might also require something like a teaching or diversity statement. Now there are some important things to keep in mind when you are putting together your application. A CV and transcript is pretty standard, but make sure that you have a Master’s degree in something relevant to the position you are applying for. Unfortunately, something like a Master’s in Education (that many K-12 teachers have) does not let you teach specific subjects in a community college. Your degree needs to be in what you are trying to teach. The cover letter and statements are where it gets tricky. First, I know we as graduate students are trained to talk about our research and what we do, but trust me, the community colleges do not care about your research. Talking about your research too much, or at all, can actively harm you. Stick to teaching experience and your qualifications. If you went to a community college, even briefly, mention it! The hiring committee or department wants to know that you understand what it is like to be a student at a community college, it is a very different culture and feel to a major 4 -year university, and the faculty know that.
 
To that end, the hiring process at a community college is an incredibly bureaucratic thing. In California, at least, this process was designed from the ground up with equity in mind. This means that your materials are put through as “objective” of a review process as they can come up with (these next examples are what I have seen or have had people tell me for the colleges in Southern California. The process may be different elsewhere but it seems to me that it is mostly the same.) Prior to hiring anyone, the committee decides what they want in terms of candidates and materials, and develops a specific rubric that they will use to evaluate job candidates. They then use this rubric to write their job ad. This means that you, the applicant, should treat the job ad as a check-list. Know that the committee is going to look for you to speak to every requirement. So if they want “familiarity with the needs of community college students,” you better find something to say about that, even if you don’t have any experience at the community college level, because if you don’t you will be graded down. Go through the job application in detail, and make sure you have something to say about each aspect of the application, and make sure it is easily identifiable in your materials.
 
This bureaucratic process continues as you move into the interview and teaching demo. When you get the call for an interview, the school will want to set up a time, usually about an hour or so, for you to come in for an interview and a brief teaching demo, usually about 15 minutes. This can be a really strange, unnerving process. In my experience, the interview usually involves a number of faculty members, and perhaps the dean or some other higher level admin sitting around the table. Each faculty member will, in turn, as you one question, with no follow-ups allowed. Then they will all grade your response to the question, and the next person will ask their question. It isn’t a conversation but something more like a graded oral exam. It is very strange and you will feel like you did terrible, even if you killed it. They will probably ask you about your teaching experience, if you have any connections to the college, and how you might deal with diverse student populations.

The teaching demo is perhaps the most important part of the interview process. After going through the questioning session, they will probably ask you to lead a quick teaching demo. There are usually no students involved, and the committee will ask you to pretend that they are the students in the class. Again, this is a very odd thing, but there are some tips and tricks you can use. First, remember your audience and the job. This is not the time to break out your job talk or give a graduate-level seminar. Remember, you are going to be teaching an intro level class to 50 bored students who probably don’t want to be there or only need your class for a transfer requirement. Stick to the basics! Pick an easy, basic idea or concept (they might even assign you one) and go over it as if they had never heard of it before. Doing an activity is a great idea! In my experience, when I asked a hiring committee to do a quick, simple activity, like answering a discussion question, they all perk up and get really into acting like students! One time, I even had the dean of the school take out her cell phone and very obviously play on it while I was teaching. She later asked why I didn’t yell at her for using her cell phone in class! (I answered that, while I would have acted differently if she actually was a student, I recognized that she was a dean and might have had some legitimate business I didn’t want to interrupt. She accepted this answer, and I ultimately got that job.) Keep it quick, keep it simple. Make a powerpoint with the basic concepts and some pictures. Don’t put too much text on it, and don’t read off it.
 
Now if everything has gone right, you should soon be getting a call from HR to make sure you get a TB test and fingerprinted (it is a state job after all!) And now you can start looking to prep your first class!

1: Intro and Background
Introductions:
One of the questions I get asked most often is, “How do I teach at a community college while in grad school?” With insufficient graduate stipends and the realization that teaching is not a priority in graduate school education, many grad students, rightfully, look to the Community College market as a way of earning some extra money as well as gaining valuable teaching experience while they are in graduate school. However, the community college system can be both bureaucratic and esoteric, full of confusing terminology and odd procedures that can make it difficult to know where to start, or how to proceed. The purpose of this series of blog posts is to hopefully provide some resources to help graduate students get started in teaching at the community college.
 
Who Am I, Who are you, and Why?
 
Who am I? Well, on the off chance that you didn’t come here directly from my Twitter account, I am Stefan Kehlenbach, a graduate student (currently) at UC Riverside. But I’ve also been an adjunct professor of political science at a number of community colleges in Southern California since 2013. In 2012, I finished my master’s degree and having not gotten into any preferred PhD programs, I moved home to figure out what I wanted to do. My father is a professor at a community college and he suggested that I look into picking up some classes at the community college to see how I liked it. Now that is a bit easier said than done, but after meeting with some people and going through the interview process, I got hired at Santa Ana College in 2013, and have been teaching around ever since. I was a “freeway flyer” for a few years, where I put together several part-time adjunct positions to try and reach a full-time level of employment. I was driving between several schools, often in the same day, to teach multiple classes. In 2015 I began my PhD at UC Riverside, but I decided that I didn’t want to give up teaching, I began to transition to teaching online and hybrid classes and have been able to teach an average of 3 classes per semester for the entire time I have been in graduate school. This is not something I recommend. It is a lot of work, even for someone with a lot of experience but taking on a few classes is completely manageable, even with a graduate school workload.
 
Ok, so who are you? Hopefully you are a graduate student who is interested in community college teaching, either as a way to make some extra money, or gain additional experience, or perhaps as a stepping stone to a full career. I will say at the outset, that as I am not personally pursuing a community college career at the moment (for a number of reasons), so I do not have a lot of advice to those seeking full-time community college jobs. But also, if you are a full professor, or someone who supervises graduate students, I encourage you to think about why one of your students might be looking into adjuncting, and what sort of resources you might be able to provide to support them or help with the underlying problems that adjuncting is solving (lack of pay, lack of pedagogical training, lack of teaching experience, etc.)
 
Why? Why I am I doing this? Well, for one, I have noticed that many graduate students are interested in teaching community college, mostly for the additional income, but also as a way of exploring a different career path and as a way of escaping what are often paternalistic rigors of graduate school. They are looking to use what they have learned and be seen as the experts that they are. I also recognize that I have benefitted from an immeasurably large amount of institutional and structural knowledge and privilege. As I mentioned before, my father is a community college professor and so I have had the opportunity to grow up around the community college system and be able to talk about both the institution and about pedagogy across the kitchen table. So, this series is, in a very small way, an effort to help pass this knowledge on and close these structural knowledge gaps.
 
Now, with the introductions and justifications out of the way, I think I would be useful to close this first entry with a brief description of what it is like for me to teach at the community college level. This is probably not exactly what it will be like for you, but it might give you an idea of what it would be like.
 
In a pre-Covid era, when I would do most of my teaching in-person an average schedule would generally include 2 in-person classes, and 1 or 2 online classes. Since I have seniority at most of my schools, I have some options as to when my classes are held. My strategy is to teach the once-a-week night classes, usually running from 6-9pm. I do this for a number of reasons, but mostly because if I have a long-ish commute, I would rather do that once a week, instead of twice or even three times a week. I don’t mind teaching in 3-hour blocks. I usually take a 10-minute break every 50 minutes. This is required by the school; classes need to have 10 minutes of break for every 2 hours of class. You can either do that in 1 long 20-minute break in the middle of a 3-hour class, or 2 shorter breaks spaced out every hour. I go with the shorter breaks because it makes the teaching a bit more structured, and you have less student attrition. I found with the 20-minute break a number of students would leave for break and not come back.
 
I usually try to have those classes at the beginning of the week, so I teach Monday and Tuesday nights, and then TA or teach as an instructor for UCR’s grad program during the day. The most stressful part of this is setting up the schedule, as none of the schedules line up perfectly. UCR is on quarters, while my community colleges are on semesters, but the semesters are offset by about a week from each other. This makes lining up all of my schedules a nightmare. But during the week my teaching is quite streamlined. The majority of my community college classes are Intro to American Government, which I have taught so often that I don’t need to do any substantial prep work, I can usually just show up and teach, which saves a lot of time. I also dedicate about one work-day per week (usually Monday) to grading. I can usually get all of my grading (TAing and CC’s) done in a bit more than a half a day. I have a number of strategies I use to streamline this process, which I will talk about later. Overall, this doesn’t feel like a huge amount of work to me, but I am a bit of a workaholic, and pretty comfortable teaching classes without defined lectures and minimal notes. If you need to meticulously prepare for each session, it might be more work for you. But then again, one of the advantages of adjuncting is that it makes you, by necessity, a more efficient teacher.
Finally, finances. How much money can you expect to make adjuncting? Well, it depends, and is sometime hard to tell. Schools pay you hourly, or technically per LHE (Lecture Hour Equivalent). This means they are going to pay you per hour you spend in a classroom, they do not usually pay for prep or grading time. This is 3 hours a week, for the whole semester. So, to find out your full semester pay you multiply your LHE by the hours of your class, and then again by the number of weeks in the semester, including finals. As a rough guide, I generally make between $4,500 and $5,000 per class, per semester but I have a lot of seniority so my payscale is on the high end. This mean, with an average of 3 classes a semester, I can add about 30k to my grad student stipend per year. Not too bad, but you aren’t gonna make your friends in finance jealous with your teaching. But you knew you weren’t gonna make any money when you signed up for grad school… right?
Next week we will talk about actually getting the job!

The last one! Everyone make a plan to vote!

Props 21-25


Prop 22: Exempts App-Based Transportation and Delivery Companies From Providing Employee Benefits to Certain Drivers

Ahh.. the Uber/Lyft Prop.

Ok, so here is what happened. Rideshare/delivery apps hire individuals on as independent contractors. Lyft and Uber have repeatedly argued that what they do is simply connect people who want to drive with people who want a ride (hence the use of the term “rideshare” as opposed to something closer to hiring a driver). They argue that because of this they don’t have to pay a minimum wage to drivers who only get paid for the actual time driving, not for the time they spend waiting for a job, or to pay healthcare benefits, regardless of how many hours a driver works per week.

California disputed this, and the legislature passed a law that limited the ability of companies to hire workers as independent contractors. This law was perhaps a bit heavy-handed and while aimed at rideshare companies, it affected people outside of those industries (like freelancers). However, this prop only impacts rideshare companies.

This prop carves out an exception in the California law for rideshare companies, basically creating a separate class of rideshare contractors, who would not be subject to the California law. They would not need to be hired as employees, but would continue to be contractors. They would get some other benefits, like a health insurance stipend, and a guarantee to receive 120% of minimum wage for each hour a driver spends actually driving.

Endorsement: NO
Its probably impossible to overstate the harm that the development of the “gig economy” has had on our society. It is a rather unique conflation of technological exploitation, undercutting workers’ rights, and the expansion of the capitalistic surveillance regime. The fact that Uber and Lyft have spent so much money to create and promote this prop should tell us all we need to know. They want this really badly; we shouldn’t give it to them.

Prop 23: Establishes State Requirements for Kidney Dialysis Clinics. Requires On-Site Medical Professional

There are around 600 dialysis facilities in California, where individuals with renal failure can go to receive dialysis, a process that replicates the function of the kidneys’ to filter blood. Dialysis facilities are operated by for-profit corporations who specialize in owning and operating these facilities. They are often not associated with hospitals or other medical facilities.

This proposition would create several regulations that would apply to these facilities.

1) It would require a doctor to be on-site during all hours that a patient receives treatment. Basically, if someone is getting dialysis, then there has to be a doctor there. If there is a shortage of doctors in the area, the state can authorize an exception and have a nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant there to meet the requirement.

2) It requires the center to report data on dialysis-related infections to the states, and establishes penalties if they do not.

3) It requires a dialysis center to receive permission from the state before closing or reducing services. This is aimed at preventing a situation where patients would not have easy access to dialysis.

4) It prohibits dialysis centers from refusing services based on who is paying. Basically the center can’t refuse to take Medicaid, Medicare or Medi-Cal.

Endorsement: NO
This one is tricky. A number of possibly beneficial aspects are being overshadowed by one main requirement. The requirement to have a doctor at every facility, at all times, is probably unnecessary. However, the requirements to report data, and the requirement to take all forms of insurance are all good things. It is also complicated by the fact that this is part of a union fight aimed at unionizing dialysis workers, which seems to be a good thing. However, most doctor and nursing organizations are in opposition, and they mostly focus on the doctor requirement. So, it seems like the good elements of this prop are overshadowed by the one large bad element.

Prop 24: Amends Consumer Privacy Laws
Oh hey, a prop about my dissertation! Fun!
Ok, so companies collect an immense amount of data on you. This can be from simple things like demographic information taken from when you input information on a form, to spending habits on places like Amazon, to incredibly detailed information about who you are, what you like, and even how you move through the world (Fun fact! The entire purpose of the Android operating system is to sell phones at a loss and make up for that by giving Google access to your real-time location, and phone usage habits!) (I’m also real fun at parties).

California already has laws about regulating data privacy. Companies have to tell you if they are collecting your data (hence the little pop-ups on literally every website these days), comply with requests to see data reports, or remove data and finally they cannot treat you differently if you don’t allow businesses to collect your data.

This prop would change existing laws in a number of ways.
1) It would change some existing privacy laws. It would change the law to have the restrictions apply to companies that have data on 100,000 consumers or households. This is up from 50,000. This might seem like a lot, but it is incredibly easy to get data on literally millions of people. It would also change some existing requirements, making companies tell you how long they are going to hold on to your data, but also allow them to keep things like student grades under certain circumstances.

2) It creates new privacy rights. It allows consumers to tell businesses to not share their personal data. It also allows consumers to correct personal data. And then it defines some data as “sensitive,” (Social security numbers, passwords and health data) and restricts their usage.

3) It creates an enforcement agency, the California Privacy Protection Agency, and allows them to collect fines from companies that violate this policy.

Endorsement: YES
Let’s add this one to the list of props that are good in theory, and do some minor good things but aren’t going to cause any major changes. There are several major shortfalls with this. First, many of these laws are targeted at companies that collect data and then sell that data. This isn’t how many corporations utilize data. In fact, data collection is a proprietary mechanism for many companies. Google and Facebook aren’t selling your data. They are using them internally. There is also an issue with the idea of transparency. These big tech companies have done such a good job at normalizing the collection of data that they realize that people, in general, don’t really care about data privacy, and so using transparency as a regulatory mechanism fails. We’ve all accepted that Google Maps is going to take pictures of our houses.
It is also telling that no companies seem to be worried about this. We know that tech companies will go to great lengths to protect their data-collection enterprises, fighting back politically. However, we also know that these companies tend to simply ignore laws that they don’t think will be enforced. So, either Google doesn’t think that this will be a problem, or they are not worried about enforcement. Either way, it’s not good.
But, as with some other props, a small good thing is still a good thing. I want it to go further, but this seems to be a good start.


Prop 25 Referendum on Law that Replaced Money Bail With System Based on Public Safety and Flight Risk
Oh hey! Another California prison system prop! But with some fun CA political procedural complications as well!

So, in 2018, the California legislature passed a law, that was signed by the governor that eliminates cash bail and changes the process for getting released from jail after being arrested. However, before this law went into effect, enough signatures were collected to put the law on the ballot as a referendum. This means that a YES vote on this prop upholds the law passed in 2018, while a NO vote rejects it. So, if you like this law, vote yes, if you don’t, vote no.

What does the 2018 law do?
It eliminates cash bail entirely. If you are arrested, instead of paying a fee to be released from jail, instead, you are assessed for the risk of committing a new crime and then either released or kept in jail.

For most misdemeanor crimes you must be released from jail withing 12 hours. There are some exceptions for things like domestic violence.

For felonies, there will be an assessment staff that would determine a risk level for individuals. People deemed to be low-risk or medium-risk would be released, with some conditions, which might include regular check-ins or electronic monitoring.

State trial courts would be responsible for this assessment. At no point in this process would anyone charged with a crime be charged any money.

Endorsement: YES
On the whole, cash bail is a racist, classist form of punishing individuals who do not have the means to pay their way out of jail, either forcing them into a cycle of debt or forcing them to take plea bargains, landing them in jail without a trial. Getting rid of cash bail is a good and necessary thing.
The one worry I have with this system, is that the prop is vague about how the risk assessment process might be undertaken. There is a worrying trend towards automating such assessments, which tends to target poor, minority communities (https://www.amazon.com/Automating-Inequality-High-Tech-Profile-Police/dp/1250074312). We’ve seen this with the rise of predictive policing, and there is a major risk that this happens here as well. However, the necessity of getting rid of the cash bail system overrides this, but we should be on alert for this.

And that's its! If you made it this far, thanks for reading the whole thing!

Part 2!
Props 18-20

Prop 18: Amends California Constitution to Permit 17-Year-Olds to Vote in Primary and Special Elections If They Will Turn 18 by the Next General Election and Be Otherwise Eligible to Vote

Currently, if you are 16 or 17 you can pre-register to vote in California. This means that you can register when you are 16, and then after you turn 18, you are immediately able to vote in the next election, whenever that may be.

This proposition makes a minor adjustment, and allows some 17 year-olds to vote in primaries, and special elections, if they turn 18 before the next general election.

The basic idea is something like this. Let’s imagine that you are 17 years old in 2020, but you have a birthday in September or October, where you will be turning 18. This means that you will be eligible to vote in the November election, but you were unable to vote in the March Primary. In a way, this means that you were unable to fully participate in the 2020 election because you were not able to participate in the primary process.
This proposition changes this so that you could vote in the primary, if you turn 18 before the general election.

Endorsement: YES
Basically, why not? It encourages political participation at a younger age and gives first time voters a complete electoral experience. We already pre-register them, and primary elections are a good way of getting young people involved.

Prop 19: Changes Certain Property Tax Rules
Alright, so we are back to property taxes. Fun!
Again, remember the old system. Property tax allocated at time of purchase, at 1.1% of purchase price. Then increasing by 2% a year.

Importantly, if you inherit a property from a parent or grandparent, you also inherit the old tax calculation.

Also importantly, if you are over 55, severely disabled, or have had property impacted by a natural disaster, there is a special rule that means that you are eligible to move into a house that is not more expensive than your existing home and keep your old tax rate.

A quick example. Imagine you purchased a house in 2010, for 100,000 (yes this is insane, but it makes the math easy!) Your home would be assessed at the time of purchase for 1,100 a year. Then in 2001, it would go up 2%, or $22, to $1,122 and so on until 2020 when your yearly property tax would be $1340.90. But according to the OC Register (https://www.ocregister.com/2019/11/29/redemption-decade-california-home-price-gains-double-the-nations/) home prices have increased 120% in that time. (The Register looks at the time between 2009 and 2019, but close enough!) This means that your $100,000 house is now worth $220,000., So if you bought it today, the property tax would be $2420.

So, the special rule means that if you are over 55, have a severe disability or had your house burn down in a wildfire, you could now move into a $220,000 home, and keep your old tax rate of $1340. Currently the rule states that you can only do this once, so if your new home burns down in a second wildfire, you are out of luck!

Ok, so what does this prop do?
Several things for people who are part of the special rule (Over 55, severely disabled, natural disaster).
1) You can buy new home anywhere in the state (some counties had restrictions on this special rule).
2) You can buy a more expensive home. Your taxes would go up, but not as much.
3) You can use the special rule three times, rather than only once.

It also changes the rules for inherited property.
Inheriting the old tax calculation would only happen if:
1) The home is used as a primary residence for the child or grandchild (you actually have to live in the inherited home)
2) It is a farm.
3) If you do not use the inherited property as a primary residence, OR, if the value of the home or farm exceeds the taxable value by more than $1 million, then the property is taxed as if you just purchased it.

So if we imagine that your grandparent somehow bought a home in San Francisco for $100,000, but it’s now worth $5 million, if you inherit the property, you have to pay taxes on it as if it were worth $5 million, not $100,000. Note: your grandparent’s property taxes would not go up, only yours if you inherit it.

Endorsement: YES
Again, California’s property taxes are bonkers, but this is a good move. With the increase in wildfires and climate change, moving because of natural disasters is going to become more common. Also, it doesn’t affect people living on a fixed income, actually giving them more flexibility, perhaps allowing them to move and free up more real estate.

And then the inheritance laws have allowed for some massive loopholes where people pay very little tax on massively valuable property, so closing that is a good thing.


Prop 20: Restrict Parole for Certain Offenses Currently Considered to Be Non-Violent. Authorizes Felony Sentences for Certain Offenses Currently Treated Only as Misdemeanors.

And now we return to California’s prison system.
In general, this is a prop that makes California’s sentencing and parole system stricter and more punitive. There are a lot of little things going on in this prop, but here are the general concepts.

It increases the penalties for theft, making it easier to charge individuals with felonies for things like shoplifting or petty theft. This is either by changing definitions of laws, or by creating new types of crime, “Serial Theft,” and “Organized Retail Theft.”

It changes parole requirements, making it harder to release someone on parole, and easier to send them back to prison. This is done in a number of ways, from changing what is considered at parole hearings, or making judges look at the cases (rather than the parole board itself), or making an individual serve more prison time before coming up for parole.

It expands DNA collection to people who have been convicted of misdemeanors.

Endorsement: NO
Again, California’s prison system is a mess, and in general the state has slowly been moving in the right direction, from attempting to lower prison populations, to reforming three strikes laws, to legalizing marijuana. This prop moves in the wrong direction, creating an overly punitive parole process and expanding the ability of prosecutors to upgrade misdemeanors to felonies, a thing that disproportionately impacts minorities.
 


Prop 21: Expands Local Governments’ Authority to Enact Rent Control on Residential Property
California currently has a patchwork rent control system. First individual cities have the ability to manage rents, which several cities (LA, San Francisco, San Jose) have done. Second the Costa-Hawkins law limits who rent control can apply to. It cannot apply to single-family homes, and it cannot apply to housing built after Feb. 1 1995. It also cannot tell a landlord what they must charge in rent, only set limitations. Third, a state law limits rent increases to 5% plus inflation, or 10% (whichever is lower) per year. This applies to housing over 15 years old.

This prop would modify Costa-Hawkins, and allow rent control to be applied to most property over 15 years old. It would not apply to single family homes owned by people with two or fewer properties. It would also allow cities to limit how much a landlord can increase rent when a new renter moves in. But, communities that do this, must allow rent increases of up to 15% for three years.

Basically it provides some additional limitations on raising rent, mostly by applying the law to more people and applying it to new tenants.

Endorsement: YES
Housing pricing is one of the biggest challenges facing California. Increasing rent control is one small way of trying to fix this problem. I think there are larger actions that could be taken, including revamping zoning restrictions, but I think this is a good thing, even if its underdone. I’m not going to stand in the way of a small good thing.

Election year, so you know what that means! Well, a number of things... but a new version of Stefan's guide to props! This year we have 12 props, broken up into three parts:

Props 14-17:

Prop 14: Authorizes Bonds Continuing Stem Cell Research

Quick tangent: What is a bond? A bond is a personal loan that individuals give to the state by purchasing them. It is like investing in the state. You buy a CA bond with the promise that the State will pay you back in the future, with a return on investment. These are sold on the open market and therefore are subject to the general fluctuations of the investment market.

Longer explanation: https://www.treasurer.ca.gov/publications/bonds101.pdf

The California Institute of Regenerative Medicine is a state-funded organization that gives out grant money to universities and other institutions to support stem cell research. This institute was created in 2004, after another proposition passed, and seeded the institute with 3 billion dollars. As of June 2020, the institution has spent nearly all of its initial $3 billion in funding, giving most of the money to University of California researchers, or private nonprofit universities and institutions, (Stanford received a large grant recently, for example).

This proposition would provide an addition $5.5 billion to the institute, for the same purpose, but it would allocate $1.5 billion of this to specifically look at brain and nervous system diseases, like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. It would also do a number of other minor things, like allow the institute to hire more full time employees, to support patient access to treatment, or provide internships and educational support for students at CA community colleges and at the Cal State System.

The financial cost of this is estimated at $250 million per year, for 30 years. Much of this money would be made by selling bonds, but the repayment of the bonds and paying down the remainder makes up the most of the state cost. It is worth noting that $250 million per year is less than 1% of the states’ General Fund budget.

Because of the speculative nature of research, we don’t really know what exactly the outcome of this expenditure will be. Discovery of new treatments or therapies may cause major savings in Medi-Cal or in other health care programs. The state also gets a cut of any invention-related income resulting from the research. So if you are a researcher, and you invent a new thing using this grant money and then license or sell your invention, the state gets a cut of the profit. In the past the income from this has been negligible, but it could be different in the future.

Endorsement: YES
Universities rely heavily on grant funding of this type, and it provides a good counter to privately funded investment and research done by large pharmaceutical corporations or other for-profit medical institutes. In addition, advances in healthcare usually provide a net financial benefit in the long term. Supporting research into major conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s also seems like a good idea.

Prop 15: Increases Funding Sources for Public Schools, Community Colleges, and Local Government Services by Changing Tax Assessment of Commercial and Industrial Property

This is one of two propositions that seek to modify how property taxes are assessed in CA.


Here’s a quick primer on property tax. Most of this info was distilled from this webpage (https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/tax/property-tax-primer-112912.aspx):

CA property tax is weird and INCREDIBLY complicated. When you buy a home (or business property), you pay a property tax of 1.1%. This then increases by 2% each year, regardless of the value of your home. So, if you buy a $100,000 home, your property tax is $1,100. Now if your property values go up and your home is now worth $150,000, your property tax does not go up proportionally. It just ticks up 2%. So the law treats the $150,000 home as if it was worth $102,000. Got it? Now, if you are over 55 or disabled, or were a victim of a natural disaster and you move into a LESS expensive home, your property taxes don’t go up. So if you are over 55 and you bought your house 30 years ago for $100,000, it might be worth $400,000 now. But if you move into a home worth $250,000, your property taxes won’t go up, they still use the calculation from your old house.

This property tax gets collected by the county government, who then allocates percentages of this back down to local governments who use it to fund things like schools. The counties themselves take a cut of this tax as well, to do county-wide projects. This means that the amount of property tax revenue given to cities and school districts varies widely. Some school districts and cities receive several times the amount as others. There are some examples of this, but they are about 10 years old, so I don’t know how relevant they are currently.

It is worth noting that school funding is based mostly on state income tax revenue, distributed to schools based on a complex formula that takes into account things like English-Language learning or other things to try to give more money to schools that serve under-served students.

Got all that? Great. Lets get to the actual prop.

What does this prop do? This changes the rules for some commercial property, not homes (that’s Prop 19!). Right now, commercial property is taxed at 1.1% at the time of purchase, and then increased by 2% every year thereafter. This rule changes it so that property is instead taxed based on actual value, rather than the 2% increase. Doing this is estimated to raise between $6.5 and $11.5 billion per year, given to local governments. It also lowers taxes on business equipment by $500,000. This means that some small businesses might actually see a tax savings.

Importantly, some businesses are exempt. It only applies to businesses with more than $3 million in property, exempting most small businesses.  If you have 50 or fewer employees, AND more than $3 million in property, this doesn’t go into effect for you until 2025. It also doesn’t impact farm land, or housing (so landlords are exempt).

Endorsement: YES
While this doesn’t fix CA’s exceptionally strange and convoluted property tax system, it is a move in the right direction. I like that exempts small businesses (so my favorite breweries won’t be harmed). I think exempting farms and housing is a mistake for a bunch reasons, but overall this is a move in the right direction, and I’m frankly surprised I haven’t seen much advertising from corporations opposing this prop.





Prop 16: Allows Diversity as a Factor in Public Employment, Education, and Contracting Decisions

In 1996, CA voters changed the California Constitution (Prop 209) to insert a section that banned consideration of “race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin” in public employment, public education, or public contracting.

The important sentence is as follows:
“The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

In this, the important section is “grant preferential treatment to.”

This prevents the state government, hiring of contractors, and importantly state university (Cal States, UCs) admissions, from using race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin, in ANY way. This sets up what might be called “color-blind” policies.

This proposition would repeal this section outright. However, because both the California constitution and the US Constitution contain protections for equal protection, the main impact of this would be allowing the California government to use “race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin” in the state government, hiring of contractors and state university admission.
This would not mandate any form of affirmative action, but would allow for its implementation if the institutions decided to change their practiced.
Some other context: Affirmative action has generally been upheld by the US Supreme Court, declaring that race is something that can be taken into account in university admissions. However, the use of strict quotas has been prohibited.

Endorsement: YES
While there are some concerns with direct affirmative action, including the idea that it doesn’t fully account for the intersection of race and class when applied to elite university admissions, the use of “color-blind” policies is actively harmful, as it preserves a status quo under the guise of fairness. It also perpetuates a myth of meritocracy as an individual trait, and not something that is deeply rooted to historical and institutional legacies marred by racism, sexism and other forms of structural injustice.


Prop 17: Restores Right to Vote after Completion of Prison Term
This is one of three amendments (Props 20 & 25), dealing with California’s prison system.
California currently has a rather robust system of felon re-enfranchisement. It is actually easier to describe who cannot vote in California, than the opposite. If you are currently in State or Federal Prison, on parole from state prison (from a felony conviction), or in a form of transfer between these conditions, you cannot vote. Everyone else can vote. After you finish parole, your voting rights are fully restored. This is markedly different from some other states that either perpetually disenfranchise people with felony convictions, or have other restrictions.

This proposition would make it so that if you were out on parole, you would be able to vote. The only people who would be prevented from voting would be individuals who are actively in state or federal prison. Currently, California, and three other states (New York, and Connecticut) restrict voting rights for people on parole. This would move California in line with the 16 states that restrict voting only to individuals in prison (Maine and Vermont let everyone vote, even if they are in prison.) All state laws can be found here (https://www.aclu.org/issues/voting-rights/voter-restoration/felony-disenfranchisement-laws-map )

Endorsement: YES
While California’s prison laws are not as bad as they used to be, especially after the repeal of the three strikes law, it is still worth pointing out the major problems of mass incarceration and its disproportionate effects it has on minority populations. There have been whole books written about California’s prison system, in particular (https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Gulag-Opposition-Globalizing-California/dp/0520242017/). And if you want to talk about power structures entrenched in a system designed to warehouse human beings, please feel free (although I WILL bring up Foucault…) Enfranchisement is a minor aspect of this, and it would only effect 50,000 people in a state of 34 million. But it is still worth doing.