San DIego Union Tribune OPINION
Our schools need Prop. 3’s funding to stay permanent
By Gabriel Mendoza Jr
As the son of an immigrant educator, I learned early on that public classrooms are transformative spaces of opportunity and community stability. Growing up crossing borders between San Diego and Tijuana, I understood that equity in education does not happen by accident. It is built through public investment, dedicated educators and sustained community advocacy. When communities invest in their children, those children transform their families and communities.
Today, as a UC Berkeley graduate, a Southwestern Community College student and an aspiring bilingual teacher, I see firsthand what is possible when neighborhood schools have the steady resources necessary to meet every child’s individual needs. Our classrooms deserve nothing less.
This November, voters face a defining choice about what we value with Proposition 3. We can protect essential, reliable funding for our public schools, or we can hand over a massive, unneeded tax break to millionaires and billionaires.
Our classrooms deserve safety. Our students deserve stability. Our educators deserve the resources to do their jobs. Every child deserves access to high-quality education, regardless of their ZIP code, income, language or background.
California voters already made this commitment in 2012 with Proposition 30 and renewed it in 2016 with Proposition 55, ensuring that California’s highest earners contribute their fair share to support neighborhood schools and community colleges. Together, they have generated more than $119 billion for public education since 2012. Proposition 3 makes this vital revenue structure permanent. Without it, public education faces a devastating fiscal cliff that could strip billions from K-12 schools and community colleges, putting an estimated one in six educators at risk of layoffs and reversing decades of classroom progress.
Propositions 30 and 55 have protected our schools from catastrophic budget cuts. This dependable revenue has enabled districts to increase per-pupil spending, expand Universal Transitional Kindergarten, reduce class sizes where possible, and provide critical academic support for low-income and vulnerable students who have historically been asked to do more with less. When public schools receive dependable funding, classroom educators have the tools to help every child thrive.
Across school districts in San Diego, this funding directly sustains programs that help level the playing field for our students. In Chula Vista, these critical dollars support dual language immersion programs that foster biliteracy and high academic achievement for thousands of emerging bilingual students across South Bay border communities. In San Diego Unified, these resources strengthen early childhood special education classrooms, ensuring students with unique learning differences and individualized education plans receive tailored, multi-sensory support from their very first day in school. In secondary districts like Sweetwater Union, ongoing investment protects specialized academic intervention, career technical education pathways, and essential student support staff that keep working-class and low-income students on track for graduation, college, and lifelong careers.
Despite these vital gains, California continues to grapple with some of the largest class sizes in the country, and aspiring educators continue to face steep financial hurdles entering and remaining in the profession. California has the fourth-largest economy on the planet. We have both the capacity and the moral responsibility to lead the nation in student funding. Proposition 3 provides the permanent foundation needed to strengthen our educator pipeline and provide the high-quality public education every student deserves.
We cannot balance state budgets on the backs of our students, because we know who pays the price when education funding disappears. It is not the millionaire or billionaire who gets another tax break. It is the English learner whose class loses a support teacher. It is the student with an individualized education program whose specialized services are reduced. It is the working-class family whose child loses a career pathway program. It is the aspiring educator priced out of the profession. It is the classroom educator who is told to do more, with fewer resources, for more students.
Over the next five weeks, aspiring educators, classroom teachers, parents and more will be knocking on doors and talking to neighbors about protecting our public schools because we know what is at stake. When we knock on your door, we hope you will join us in standing up for our students. Vote “yes” on Proposition 3 and build the well-funded, equitable classrooms California’s children need now more than ever.
Mendoza Jr. is a graduate of UC Berkeley and a student at Southwestern Community College. He serves as the 2026-2027 President of CTA Aspiring Educators.