During their walkout in January, Los Angeles Unified School District teachers seemed to be on the receiving end of enthusiastic public support.

Months later, will all those solidarity honks and retweets translate into precious votes?

The strike ended with a contract agreement aiming to cap class sizes, raise teacher pay and hire full-time nurses at each school, among other pledges.

To see it through, LAUSD needs more money –- enter what experts say is California’s most ambitious effort by a school district to pass a parcel tax.

Measure EE is coming to the ballot box on Tuesday, June 4. It’s a 16-cent-per-square-foot parcel tax on residential and commercial properties within the district’s 710 miles.

It requires a whopping 66.67% yes vote to pass, a tall order for any election let alone a special vote with an expected low turnout.

If passed, the tax would generate an estimated $500 million per year in revenue for LAUSD, $6 billion over 12 years.

If it fails, the district will likely struggle to make the changes promised in its contract agreement with the teachers union.

LAUSD is projected to drain its reserves and dip some $700 million into the red over the next three years, and officials warn of cuts and layoffs.

Where do parcel taxes come from?

A parcel tax is a form of real estate tax that’s not based on a piece of land’s property value. Since the 2008 financial crisis, California school districts have placed them on ballots as a creative way to bolster fluctuating state funds.

The story begins in 1971, when the state’s Supreme Court ruled that a longheld system of funding schools predominately through local property taxes was unconstitutional because it drove stark educational inequality.

The 1978 passage of Proposition 13 further constrained local revenue and made state revenue California public schools’ dominant source of funding. Parcel taxes became the most common instrument to supplement, particularly during economic downturns.

Most parcel taxes are passed at a regressive fixed rate per parcel (called flat taxes), meaning they place more of their relative cost on small homeowners.

But some more progressive forms, like Measure EE, base the dollar amount on square footage of the land parcel or the buildings atop it.

Under EE, the owner of a 10,000-square foot building in Hollywood would pay $1,600 a year, while the owner of a 1,000-square foot house in Reseda would pay $240.

Who gets a parcel tax and who doesn’t

Across California, 416 school districts across the state have passed parcel taxes between 1983 and 2018 to grow their coffers; 59.8% of parcel taxes put on the ballot have passed.

The majority are these districts are concentrated in the Bay Area, including San Mateo and Santa Clara County.

But in Los Angeles County, 14 school districts have passed various kinds of parcel taxes over the past decade — including district bordering LAUSD such as Los Virgenes, San Marino, South Pasedena, Manhattan Beach and Culver City.

Education analysts say parcel taxes are more likely to pass in geographically smaller districts with lower numbers of low-income students.

This can exacerbate the gap in academic performance between students from low- and high-income families, suggests a Public Policy Institute of California report.

Similar districts across California will be watching Tuesday’s election returns, said Patrick Murphy, senior fellow at the PPIC focusing on K-12 education and fiscal governance reform. That’s because LAUSD is an especially large and urban district with a majority of low-income students, he said.

“I think it will be the largest parcel tax in the history of the state if it passes,” Murphy said. “You can sure bet that Oakland’s watching, Sacramento City, New Haven even.”

The outcome may also affect a pending senate constitutional amendment to lower the threshold to pass a parcel tax from two thirds to a 55% majority.

The two strategies school districts employ when trying to pass a parcel tax in California, he said, Are:

Aiming for an election with a larger turnout;

Or “working your tail off to get your yes votes” in a very low turnout election and “hope there isn’t an organized NO campaign.”

The NO on EE campaign may turn out to be less vigorous than it threatened, having raised under $2 million after projecting a $4 million campaign.

Is it LAUSD’s turn?

LAUSD’s financial strains are driven by deeper structural issues like low enrollment, rising pension costs and competition from charter schools — plus funding the new agreement with teachers.

LA-area business leaders are the loudest critics of Measure EE, saying LAUSD needs to manage its existing funds better. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which has sued the district for making allegedly illegal changes to the ballot language, point to the tax as an effort to chip away at Proposition 13 in the long term.

Advocates cite low per-pupil funding in Los Angeles compared to such cities as New York and Boston, and contend that this tax is a step in the right direction.

Pedro Noguera, professor of education at UCLA, passed a parcel tax during his time as a professor at UC Berkeley to lower class sizes and avoid cuts to the school’s music program.

“But in LA, the problems are related to structural issues that aren’t going to go away,” he said. “That’s why if they don’t get these resources they’re going to be in trouble.”

Noguera suggested another challenge LAUSD faces is that many of this city’s more reliable voters — many of whom are affluent — don’t send their kids to public schools and therefore “have less at stake.”

Scant polling on the issue has shown public support for the tax in the strike’s wake, but low turnout could threaten its success.

“All of the issues the teachers were raising in the strike, those are still there,” he said. “The status quo is terrible and it’s going to get worse if double EE doesn’t pass.”