Time to mobilize California’s education community. When describing the events planned, California Teachers Association (CTA) president, David Sanchez, said, “enough is enough.”
Activities at schools and district offices all over the state will culminate Saturday, May 14, with demonstrations in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and a sit-in in Sacramento. The Capitol building steps are perfect–long, wide steps that allow plenty of room to gather.
Expect lots of signs, sound bites, and teachers on street corners. On the news, watch teachers in school T-shirts marching down boulevards and calling out the legislators who insist that passage of the tax extensions by ballot or by legislative vote is not the way to balance the 2011-2012 budget.
Speaking of which, Friday, May 6, 2011, the California Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee met in Silicon Valley. The hearing, one of many up and down the state, settled in at one of Microsoft’s mega-campus conference rooms in Mountain View. Besides five members of the Senate committee and three panels- higher education, business leaders, and K-12 education-with three speakers on each panel, there were about fifty community members who attended.
Reports of the revenue still needed to balance the state’s budget for 2011-2012 range from $12.4 billion to $15.4 billion. The amount depends on whether one counts $1 billion in state reserves and a $2.5 billion increase in state revenues-unexpected, but possible.
With those numbers in mind, each panel of speakers expressed in detail the distress for each community: public colleges and universities, technology companies of any kind, and public elementary and secondary schools. If you are certain that charter schools and vouchers are going to save the public schools in California, think again–the numbers still apply.
This state alone serves one of every eight students in the United States-6 million children. If the 2011-2012 budget is balanced on the back of students at $4 billion more in spending cuts, classroom size for kindergarten-grade 2 students will move from 30 to 32, upper elementary class size from 32-35. The numbers are worse for secondary, community college, and universities as teachers are laid off.
Don Moser, Evergreen Union High School District Superintendent, reminded the gathering that students who will graduate in 2012 will have studied while fiscal services were cut from under them every year they attended secondary school.
All nine panelists exhorted the members of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Committee to balance the state budget with both revenue increases and spending cuts, not just cuts. Furthermore, speakers implored the legislators to come to grips with a long term budget plan. Education communities cannot struggle on to improve academic success for students unless funding is stabilized.
Even the most conservative committee member put down his iphone when the Franklin-McKinley School District Superintendent, John Porter, spoke. He said that after considering all the alternatives if more billions are slashed, it may be just as well to shut schools down in April next year and keep a decent program going until then.
Porter wondered why the United States can’t consider children national treasures, like children in Denmark?
March on! Let the legislature know what teachers think! Pass the tax extensions. Stop more cuts.
