At Hoover Recreation Center in South Los Angeles, education was on the minds of many of the residents that dropped by to cast their vote for L.A.'s new mayor and on the fate of Measure A, the half-cent sales tax increase proposal.  

Guadalupe Rosales, a student at Cal State Long Beach, said she is taking classes this semester at Los Angeles Trade Tech College, where several of her professors were strong supporters of City Councilwoman Jan Perry.  Going into this election, she was looking for a candidate that would make education reform and aid for students a high priority as mayor, and after talking with faculty and classmates at LATTC, she decided Perry was the right person for the job.

"We need someone that cares about high school and college students, that will make more opportunities for them," she said.

Perry, whose campaign headquarters are located just a mile east of Hoover Recreation Center, lists L.A Unified transparency and facilitating charter creation as the core of her education platform.  She believes that creating charter schools will offer more options for parents on where to send their kids to school and help ease the transition from elementary to middle school, when test scores usually drop. 

These positions are especially popular in South Los Angeles, where Perry says she will assist numerous charter schools that were created as a result of the declining health of the public system and need more support from City Hall. Michal Meyers, a USC student, said that she voted for Perry because “education and school union reform are the largest issue [in Los Angeles].”

SEE ALSO: | L.A. Mayor's Race Draws Voters To Polls

Concerns over education also had an impact on some voters when deciding whether to support Measure A, which will increase the city sales tax by half a cent to 9.5 cents on the dollar. Proponents say the measure will cover the city's projected $216 million budget deficit, which will save important city services from cutbacks.   Leo Ramirez, who lives in the University Park neighborhood, said that he supported Proposition A for its potential to fund after school programs.

“If it has to be more taxes for an after school program, it’s worth it.  It’s something that I wish I had in high school,” he said. “Keeping kids out of gangs is important to me.  I voted for [Proposition A] for safety more than anything.  That isn’t focused on enough around here,” he added.

But others felt that the tax would put too much burden on residents that live in a city with a sales tax that is already at 9%.  Greg Karber, a 26-year-old unemployed USC graduate who voted for Eric Garcetti and describes himself as a “boilerplate left-winger,"said  that he was adamantly against Measure A.

 “I think all sales taxes are regressive, and this is far too high of a sales tax percentage.  Tax property if you’re going to raise taxes,” he added.

SEE ALSO: | Candidates Take Sides On Measure A

 

Eric Ruble is a special contributor from Annenberg TV News.  

Reach him and Jeremy here.