Schools in worse financial shape than ever: budget will make things worse 

Increasing numbers of California schools are dipping into their reserves to finance daily operations, and the situation is likely to get worse if the governor signs the new state budget approved Thursday by the Legislature.

The day two-thirds of the Legislature voted yes on the new 2005-06 budget proposal, state Controller Steve Westly released his annual state school audit that showed record numbers of school districts and county offices of education are resorting to deficit spending to pay their bills.

The new report found that for the first time in more than a decade, total school district general fund expenditures exceeded revenues, with 522 districts spending more than they took in. The number of school districts that “engaged in multi-year deficit spending,” the report said, jumped from 248 districts in fiscal year 2002-03 to 339 districts in fiscal 2003-04.

While lawmakers and Gov. Schwarzenegger were celebrating the 2005-06 budget agreement, Westly , Superintendent Jack O’Connell and Scott P. Plotkin, Executive Director of the California School Boards Association, called a press conference to express their dismay that the new spending plan cements the governor’s failure to fully fund Proposition 98 guarantees to schools.

Lawmakers and the governor, Plotkin said, “are patting themselves on the back for making a bad deal for education.”

Calling the budget deal “a beautiful landing at the wrong airport,” Plotkin said the new budget will force schools to make more cuts in art, music, libraries, counselors, nurses and librarians. “Schools have been driven to the brink. The governor says that this budget fully funds Proposition 98,” he added. “But if that were true, schools would have received an additional $1.8 billion last fiscal year and $1.4 billion this fiscal year. We’re owed between $2.5 and $3.1 billion. And it’s the kind of discretionary money that Proposition 98 was designed to provide.”

Westly said he expects that budget shortfalls will force districts to close schools, and make further program cuts; in the most extreme cases, the state will be forced to take over management of districts with the most extreme financial problems.

“Make no mistake,” Westly said, “we need to fully fund education to Proposition 98 standards. We need to correct this now.”

Westly said he “would love to take the $50 to $70 million” it will cost the state to hold a special election at the governor’s insistence, and invest the money in California’s schools.

“At the very time we need to put every penny into schools, we’re faced with a partisan special election.”

Even more worrisome, said Superintendent O’Connell, is the governor’s so-called “Live Within Our Means Act” on the special election ballot as Proposition 76. The measure, which would “eviscerate Proposition 98,” O’Connell said, should be called the “Be Mean to Education Act” for all the harm it would do the public schools if it passed.

“This measure represents the most direct frontal attack on public education in the last 25 years,” he said.