California's public schools will continue to be starved for funding until the voting electorate better reflects California's population, according to a law professor at UC Davis. Martha S. West says stark demographic differences between those who vote -- mostly white and richer than average -- and those most dependent on a public school education -- communities of color -- have allowed overall spending for schools to plummet, most sharply in the 1990s. California ranked 41st among states in school spending in 1995. "We must acknowledge the increasing economic and educational gap between our suburban white worlds and the impoverished worlds of the inner cities, where most black and Latino students go to school," she writes in an article to be published in the Iowa Journal of Gender, Race and Justice. West says the more affluent -- sometimes willing to pass special school tax measures by the required two-thirds majority in their own districts -- are often unwilling to approve higher statewide taxes or funding transfers from their richer districts to poor ones. Her article highlights the demographic differences: in 1994-95, 41 percent of public school students were white while 77 percent of 1996 voters were white, and 48 percent of 1996 voters had incomes of over $50,000 when the median income for the state was $38,000.