At a special meeting of the board of education on July 30, all five members unanimously voted to order a special election on November 2 to place a parcel tax on the ballot. The $98 tax per parcel, if it achieves the two-thirds majority required to pass, would be used for teacher salaries and to bankroll programs that embrace the arts and music and assist with student achievement.

But even with the steep percentage of votes required to pass the tax, members of the board are confident about its chances for approval, though voters will also be weighing in on a parcel tax in the Fremont Union High School District. If both measures pass, property owners will be paying an additional $196 a year to cover the combined taxes.

"We are the lowest-funded district in Santa Clara County, and that's not going to change," said Pearl Cheng, school board president. "And we definitely see that in our county, there are a number of districts considering a local parcel tax. We see and realize that this is a solution."

Formulas created by the state 25 years ago prescribe the low amount of money that Cupertino Union receives per student despite property values that have drastically risen in the same time period. The district has batted around the idea of a parcel tax to help augment this low per-student amount for about a year and a half, according to Superintendent William Bragg.

"We've done three surveys to assess the community, to see if they support this effort, the most recent in the first part of June," Bragg said. That survey showed that a $98 parcel tax, to be paid once a year for six years, was likely to receive more than the two-thirds voter approval required for passage.

Pollsters placed potential parcel-tax amounts of $120, $95 and $75 on the survey, and when support was gauged alongside a parcel-tax proposal for the overlapping Fremont Union district, the $95 amount received a 70 percent approval.

On July 27, Fremont Union approved the placement of its own parcel-tax initiative on the November ballot. The proposals are the same--$98 per parcel for six years. Both the Fremont Union and Cupertino Union proposals include exemptions for seniors on fixed incomes.

With that anticipated exemption rate at 10 percent, Cupertino Union projects that the parcel tax, if passed, would raise $3.5 million for the district, with approximately 37,000 parcels under Cupertino Union's jurisdiction. Cupertino Union has fewer parcels than does Fremont Union, but the two will work together to pass both tax proposals.

"We want this to go for the entire community," Cheng said. "We're all in this locale together."

The Cupertino Union proposal is unique because it promises an oversight committee to monitor spending of the proposed tax money. "A question a lot of people had with the Blue Ribbon Task Force for [a proposed] countywide parcel tax was that there was no oversight committee," said board member Ben Liao, who wanted the committee mentioned in the ballot language.

Superintendent Bragg said that the oversight committee is not often a deciding factor for many voters, but the campaign will emphasize that aspect of the proposal. School board members and district employees cannot campaign on school property or time, but Cheng says a community-based campaign will likely kick off later in August.