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Most power over the day-to-day running of schools belongs to the roughly 1,040 school districts. These are separate jurisdictions from cities and counties and have their own boards whose members are elected locally.
Yet in allocating responsibility for the prevailing mediocrity, all of these officials can plausibly point accusing fingers at voters. After all, they adopted Proposition 13, which cut the schools’ main revenue source (property taxes). Voters, for their part, usually shrug and say that they only voted against the taxes, not against the services those taxes paid for. To prove that point, whose irony often eludes Californians, voters passed still more initiatives to restore the school spending whose tax financing they had cut.

The main such measure, on the 1988 ballot, was called Proposition 98. Its main sponsor was the California Teachers Association, the largest spender in Californian politics, which hired Mr Mockler to draft it. His original text, as he now describes it, was still simple enough to be comprehensible: “You [ie, schools] get what you got last year, adjusted for the increase in students and the increase in personal income per capita.” So school spending would generally rise in line with demand and affordability. Mr Mockler added a provision that, following good fiscal years, the base would be reset at a higher level so as to put a floor under school spending yet allow the possibility of additional growth.

A. 어휘
power 權限(권한). school districts 학구. separate 분리된.
jurisdictions 管轄權(관할권), 재판권. allocate 割當(할당)하다.
prevailing 일반적인, 유행하고 있는, 우세한.
mediocrity 일반사람, 凡人(범인), 평범한 사람, 凡庸(범용).
officials 관리, 공직자. plausibly 그럴듯하게, 그럴듯하게 말하는.
accusing 비난하는. adopt 채택하다. Proposition 국민발의.
revenue 歲入(세입). draft 起草(기초)하다, 草案(초안).
shrug 어깨를 으쓱하다, 과소평가하다.
elude 책임을 교묘히 피하다, 벗어나다. restore 復古(복고)하다, 회복하다.
measure 법령. ballot 투표. original text 原本(원본).
comprehensible 파악하는, 이해하는. adjusted 조정된.
affordability 감당 가능성. provision 條項(조항). fiscal years 會計年度(회계년도).
put a floor under ...의 밑을 받치다, 안정시키다, 支持(지지)하다.
additional growth 추가성장.