Reply #63: The big thing in Prop 13 was limiting how much property taxes could be raised each year.

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It set the maximum at 2% annually. So property taxes, beginning in 1979, could only increase at an annual rate of no more than 2% each year.

However, during almost the entire 1980s, and 1990s, the inflation rate was higher than 2%, even reaching as high as 5 or 6 percent some years. The average inflation rate from 1980 to 1999 was 3.85%.

That means, after a decade of not being able to keep up with inflation, education funds from property taxes in 1989 had about half the buying power they did in 1979. Another 10 years later, in 1999, they were about half again.

So, in 1999, education funds from property taxes had one-fourth the buying power due to inflation, that the money did in 1979.

Combine that with a population explosion in California, putting hundreds of thousands of extra kids into public K-12 schools, and the California school system is at the breaking point.