The Culver City office of the City Clerk on June 4, 2026 saw a small group organizers from Excellence for Culver Culver City Schools delivering their petition. The call for a sliding-scale parcel tax is now in process to be approved for the November ballot.
The organizers were pleased to be submitting 4230 signatures, with only 2912 needed for the measure to be put to the voters. City Clerk Jeremy Bocchino congratulated the group on a unique achievement; this is the first successful petition to be a completely volunteer effort. Typically, a group looking to put a measure on the ballot will pay signature gatherers, but EFCCS did it all with community members.
Organizer Darrel Menthe, the leader of the Downtown Business Association, lauded the group for their camaraderie, calling it a cross-sectional effort to support a common cause.
The idea for a sliding scale parcel tax was modeled on similar measures passed in Alameda and Berkeley. The call for “stable, locally controlled funding” for the Culver City Unified School District is in response to the historically low funding that our schools get from the state, and the massive cuts to education being put into place at the federal level.
The city does the preliminary approval of signatures, and then it will go to Los Angeles County. State law gives the county 90 days to validate the signatures. With a cushion of more than a thousand, it’s highly likely to meet the standard.
Volunteer leader Jeanne Black, who called herself a latecomer to the team effort, observed that the need for support for the schools brought some unlikely allies together for ‘excellence.’ “It’s was an opportunity for people to work together, despite their different perspective for and political positions. Education is so important to our community. I’m doing this for the future of our schools and the future students. “
The steering committee for EFCCS included Amy Hee Kim, Anna Kosoff, Daniel Selz, Darrel Menthe, Ji Young Denick, Paul Zagala and Ross Piro.
LA County has begun verifying signatures today.
Judith Martin-Straw
