Voter ID / Unifying School Districts
To Address Lamorinda School District Financial Challenges, We Should Consider Unification
The communities of Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, and the parts of Walnut Creek that together form the Acalanes Union High School District are renowned for their excellent schools. Families are drawn here by a shared commitment to first-class public education. Yet, as we face the future, we have a responsibility to ask if our current structure is the most effective and efficient way to serve our students. It is time for a thoughtful community conversation about school district unification.
This conversation is not just timely; it is urgent. Our school districts are facing mounting financial pressures that threaten the very excellence we cherish. This past May, voters rejected a new parcel tax for the Acalanes Union High School District, forcing it to plan for $2 million in budget reductions for the upcoming school year. Meanwhile, the Lafayette School District, already supported by one of the area's highest parcel taxes, is grappling with its own budget shortfall and will soon face the difficult decision of asking its residents for yet another increase to prevent deeper cuts.
The idea of unification is not new. For decades, California has encouraged the consolidation of separate elementary and high school districts, moving away from a fragmented model that dates back to the early 20th century. Despite having a small fraction of its current population, California had 2809 K-12 school districts in 1942; almost triple the number we have today.
Among the districts that consolidated were the six elementary districts and one high school district that formed San Ramon Valley Unified School District in 1964. SRVUSD provides a high level of academic excellence despite requiring lower supplemental taxes than Lamorinda districts.
In Lamorinda and the eastern part of Walnut Creek, our current structure is inherently duplicative. Taxpayers support five separate districts—Lafayette, Moraga, Orinda, and Walnut Creek for K-8 students, and the Acalanes Union High School District for grades 9-12. This means five superintendents, five district offices, and five sets of administrative overhead. Consolidation, in any form, promises greater efficiency by reducing these redundant costs and allowing more of our tax dollars to be spent directly in the classroom on teachers, programs, and student support.
Academically, unification offers the chance to create a more seamless K-12 educational path. Today, students from four different K-8 districts arrive at our high schools with varied curricular backgrounds. This requires high school teachers to bridge instructional gaps. A unified K-12 system ensures a coherent, articulated curriculum, smoothing the critical transition from middle to high school and allowing for deeper, more consistent learning from day one.
The question is not whether to unify, but how. Our communities face a choice between two distinct models, each with its own set of benefits and trade-offs.
One path is the creation of a single, comprehensive K-12 district serving all of our communities. This approach would maximize financial efficiency by consolidating five administrative structures into one. The resulting economies of scale would be significant, freeing up the most possible funding to be reinvested into our schools. It would also create a single, perfectly aligned curricula for all students who will ultimately attend high school together, fostering greater collaboration among educators across all grade levels and towns. Our towns are more alike than different with similar goals for our children.
However, this model raises valid concerns about the potential loss of local control. Our towns each have a unique identity and a deep sense of community pride that is intrinsically linked to their local schools. For many, the idea of a larger, more centralized district feels distant and less responsive to the specific values and priorities that make each of our communities special.
An alternative approach is to form four separate K-12 unified districts, one for each community: Lafayette, Moraga, Orinda, and the affected area of Walnut Creek. This model honors the powerful desire for local autonomy. Each town would retain its own school board and superintendent, ensuring that decision-making remains firmly in the hands of the community it serves. This path still offers meaningful benefits, streamlining five districts into four and solving the curriculum alignment issue for students within each individual feeder system.
This approach, however, would not achieve the same level of cost savings as a single district. By maintaining four separate administrative structures, we would forgo the greater economies of scale and continue to fund a degree of the duplication that unification seeks to address. It’s important to consider just how much these districts really differ.
There is no simple answer, and both paths offer credible advantages. The choice before us is a fundamental one: Do we prioritize maximum efficiency and integration, or do we favor a model that preserves local identity and control? Our schools are the heart of our communities. As we consider their future, we must engage in an open and respectful dialogue, carefully weighing these options to ensure we build a system that will serve our students with excellence for generations to come.
The Right to Vote – ID Required
CoCoTax thanks Executive Committee member Denise Kalm for contributing this article.
There are many people concerned about ensuring that our vote is protected by mandating voter ID, cleaning the rolls of voters who have died or moved and eliminating ballot harvesting, where non-related people can collect hundreds of ballots, many unused, to vote as they are paid to vote. Fair elections are important to give citizens trust in those elected. People argue it is too hard to get an ID, but it isn’t. States provide IDs for free in most cases, if you show your citizenship proof. You need an ID for a lot of things, such as getting on a plane, or, in some cases, to write a check. I’ve had to show my ID at a doctor’s office. It’s basic to adult life.
But why should taxpayers care? When our elections are tainted by votes harvested and redirected (rewritten or discarded), votes from people who have moved or died or from non-citizens, the wishes and needs of citizens are too often over-ridden. Parties frequently have an agenda and wish to get the population to vote accordingly. It’s bad enough in California that the way ballots are written too often obscures or contradicts the actual result of the initiative. In the group of those voting illegally, there may be a higher proportion of those looking for government handouts, skewing results in favor of costing taxpayers more. This could come from higher taxes, rent controls disadvantaging individual landlords, state budgets not accurately recognizing the actual needs of citizens. We should care about voting integrity.
What’s Been Tried…and is Coming
AB25-California Voter ID and Election integrity Act of 2025 was introduced in California, but failed to get a full vote, blocked by the super-majority of Democrats in Sacramento. It included a mandate for a government issued ID, citizenship verification, maintaining accurate voter lists, making ballot counting faster and more efficient and enhancing the signature review process. It turns out it is pretty easy to keep from even letting the entire state reps from having a chance to weigh in on things; bills can be stuck in committee, delayed till everyone forgets and more.
But “the people” aren’t going to give up. In December, 2024, CA State Rep. Carl DeMaio, introduced the CA Voter ID Initiative to require citizenship verification to register to vote, as well as photo ID to cast a ballot.
In introducing the measure, DeMaio said “too many Californians have lost trust and confidence in our elections – and we need to fix that immediately if we are to have a healthy democracy going forward.”
Both DeMaio and the measure’s co-sponsor State Rep. Bill Essayli have worked to convince Sacramento politicians to do the right thing and put the measure on the 2026 ballot – but the legislature has stubbornly refused to act.
Recently, DeMaio announced that elected officials and campaign committees have formed a coalition to support the qualification and passage of a Voter ID Initiative for the 2026 election. Early polls show a super-majority of Republicans and Independents and even a majority of Democrat voters supporting the initiative. Overall, 68% of Californians want voter ID to be shown to vote and 72% want citizenship verification prior to registration.
“Politicians and the media will keep denying the fact that California has real problems with election integrity, but the message from the public is loud and clear in support of requiring Voter ID as the best way to restore public trust and confidence in our elections,” says Carl DeMaio, State Assemblymember (District 75) and Chairman of Reform California.
There are already 36 states who have some kind of voter ID requirement.
I didn’t know this, but every country in Europe requires photo ID to cast a ballot. It’s also standard practice in Canada, Japan, South Korea, India, Mexico, South Africa and many other nations, both developed and developing.
Julie Luckey, Director of Californians for Voter ID. "Support for voter ID laws transcends party lines—it’s not a Republican or Democratic issue. Polls consistently show that majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and independents favor these measures. Nor is this unique to the United States; it’s a global norm. Voter ID is simply a common-sense policy. California needs to modernize its elections to align with the vast majority of the world’s democracies. While our state leads in so many areas, it lags behind on this issue. It’s time for California to catch up and enact voter ID laws."
“There is a cancer growing in our democracy where too many people have lost confidence in our elections – and enacting a Voter ID law should be seen as the best bipartisan solution to this problem,” says Bill Essayli, State Assemblymember (District 63) and Chairman of Common-Sense California.
“Voter ID is a common-sense step that improves election security, which is why it receives broad support among Democrats, Republicans and independents throughout California. By passing a Voter ID initiative in California we can give voters increased confidence in our elections without unnecessarily restricting access to voting,” says Ken Calvert, US Representative (District 41).
A Word from Our Registrar
Kristin Connelly, Clerk Recorder Registrar of Voters for Contra Costa, spoke to CC Taxpayers last year and how transparent they try to be. She spoke about how proponents of measures can review rejected signatures and that signature verification is critical to voting integrity. However, I spent hours at the Martinez office, watching ballots being processed and signatures being “verified.” It turns out all we can do is watch; the idea is that if someone is watching them, the workers won’t cheat. But a bunch of signatures were passed on which I considered not even closely related to the nine signatures on file. We also can’t protest when a ballot is rejected and the workers decide how to rule on what was meant. As an example, voters might vote for both Harris and Trump; they decided based on a subjective idea of which vote looked like it had more ink on it. Instead, it should have been ignored, as an invalid entry.
They claim not to have the money to do this job properly, in part because property tax income is down. But with the large number of people doing the job before and after the election, it could be done right. Connelly did mention that Motor-Voter is an issue every year in the legislature, but proposed changes somehow never make it through.
In response to a question about citizenship, Kristin explained that California residents registering to vote have to provide a social security number or a driver’s license for citizens. They sign under penalty of perjury that they are eligible. The Elections Division is not funded to investigate nor do they have the authority to question eligibility of registered voters. When I’ve been at the DMV (or watched external groups register people, no proof seems to be needed.) This automatic registration, and automatic mailing of ballots has to stop. It is rife with problems.
Reform California has already begun recruitment of volunteers to collect signatures to qualify the initiative.
To commit to sign the petition when it is ready for circulation, Visit: www.VoterIDPetition.org
Governor Newsom’s Redistricting Plan Would Not Be Cheap
This article, written by CoCoTax President Marc Joffe originally appeared on the California Policy Center website.
Gavin Newsom has floated the idea of redistricting California between Censuses. The goal would be to offset potential Republican gains from a mid-decade redistricting plan being discussed in Texas. While there are valid political arguments for and against Newsom’s plan, the fiscal case is clear: mid-decade redistricting will cost California about a quarter of a billion dollars at a time of budgetary stress.
The bulk of the cost will come from holding a special election. This is necessary because voters previously amended the state constitution to require district lines be drawn each decade by a non-partisan commission. Newsom would need a new constitutional amendment to redraw the lines in time for the 2026 election, and, with no regularly scheduled election this year, he’d need a special statewide election to vote on the plan.
The last statewide special election was the unsuccessful recall of 2021. That election cost a total of $200.2 million according to the Secretary of State. Inflation since then means we can expect significantly higher costs in 2025. (Postal rates alone have risen sharply, from 58 cents 78 cents compared to just 58 cents in 2021.) A back-of-the-envelope estimate suggests a 20 percent increase, or about $240 million.
If voters approve the redistricting, the state will then have to spend more money to implement it. The Citizen’s Redistricting Commission spent $17.9 million to redraw lines after the 2020 Census. A legislative controlled redistricting may cost less because it would not require compensating independent commissioners. On the other hand, it could cost more due to general inflation and the need to complete the project on a very short timeline.
Between a special election and the costs of actual redistricting , we’re looking at an unbudgeted expenditure of about $250 million. And this expenditure will take place at a time when both the Legislative Analyst’s Office and Department of Finance are predicting multi-year deficits.