Governor forms group to defend his budget 

Unable to convince the press or the public to go along with his recent budget proposals to gut Proposition 98 funding guarantees, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has created his own coalition, which he calls “The Coalition for Education Reform.”

The governor’s new group of handpicked supporters is an attempt to show broad backing for the budget proposals that public education advocates say would devastate California schools.

“We should be having a broad discussion about the big issue: the chronic and continuing problem of inadequate school funding, but unfortunately, the governor has chosen to try and distract us by talking about divisive issues like merit pay for teachers and teacher pension plans,” said Dr. Kerry Clegg, President of the California School Boards Association. “I guess the good news is that the decision to convene this ‘coalition’ suggests pretty strongly that our message about broken promises and inadequate resources is having an impact.” The formation of the governor’s new coalition comes in the wake of the statewide Education Coalition’s aggressive media campaign and polls that show Californians do not approve of the governor’s newest education proposals.

Conspicuously absent from the governor’s coalition are representatives from any of the state’s major education advocacy groups. The Orange County Register recently reported that Capistrano Unified School District Superintendent Jim Fleming declined the governor’s invitation to serve on the coalition because he objected to Schwarzenegger’s unfair and “excessive” criticism of schools and his failure to support adequate state funding for public education in his budget proposals for 2005-06.

CSBA and other members of the Education Coalition have launched an extensive media and advocacy campaign aimed at letting voters know the real story behind the budget picture painted by the governor.

In February, the Education Coalition began airing a new radio ad that has played in every major media market in the state. The radio spot calls upon listeners to let Gov. Schwarzenegger know that California voters oppose his proposals to drastically cut school funding and eviscerate the voter-approved measure that protects public education funding. In the spot, a caller contacts the governor’s office to ask why Schwarzenegger has failed to keep the promises he made during last year’s state budget crisis.

The education community has already done its part to help reduce the state’s budget deficit by agreeing to forgo $2 billion to which schools were entitled this year, in exchange for the governor’s promise to protect Proposition 98 guarantees to schools in future years. The governor also pledged that schools would get their fair share of future state general funds when the economy improved, as it has this year.

“When he was campaigning for governor, Schwarzenegger promised to protect Prop. 98,” the caller tells a fictional and unsympathetic operator. Instead of keeping his promise to schools, the caller continues, the governor “wants to gut Prop. 98 and stiff our kids for $2 billion every year!” Finally, the caller urges listeners to “call the governor and tell him our children depend on us for their future.”

At its annual education conference in December, CSBA collected signatures from more than 1,500 school board members and superintendents on “pink slip” letters that urge the governor and Legislature to honor the promise they made last year to protect school funding and stand behind Proposition 98 protections for schools. More recently, CSBA created and distributed to all member districts and county offices a comprehensive media and advocacy kit to help local school boards alert their communities to the potentially devastating effects of the governor’s budget cutting proposals.

“The governor’s proposals would represent both a huge hit on Proposition 98 guarantees in the coming budget year and would render useless the minimum funding guarantees voters approved when they passed Proposition 98,” said CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin. “We wish that the governor would remember this when he’s visiting schools talking about his proposals to fund new vocational education programs. His proposal gives schools a pittance with one hand while taking away huge amounts of money with the other.”

At a Feb. 9 press conference at the Crocker Riverside Elementary School in Sacramento, Plotkin and other coalition members discussed their advocacy campaign to let voters know how much the governor’s proposals would hurt schools and children.

PTA President Carla Niño promised the statewide organization would mount a “grassroots advocacy” effort to fight the governor’s budget plan.

“The state’s education system is already seriously under funded,” she said. “We’re taking this to our 1 million members. Our children can’t vote, and the PTA is their voice.”

The day before the Education Coalition press conference, CSBA Assistant Executive Director for Governmental Relations Rick Pratt testified about the impacts of the governor’s proposals before the state Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 2 on Education Finance.

Responding to the governor’s assertion that his budget boosts education funding by 7.1 percent, Pratt testified that the administration’s failure to be honest about its “meager” education budget is “setting local districts and governing boards up for failure.”

“Do the math,” Pratt urged lawmakers. “It’s a 2.2 percent increase, not 7.1 percent.” The rate of inflation is nearly 4 percent, he said.

It’s unfair to schools, Pratt said, to mislead local communities into thinking that educators have “money to do new things,” when, in fact, school revenue is not keeping pace with inflation.

“We need to be honest so we can deal with” the realities of the governor’s proposals, he said.

The same day, the Legislative Analyst briefed the press on the office’s new Proposition 98 “primer.” In the report, the LAO cautioned that the governor’s Proposition 98 “reforms” would limit lawmakers’ discretion to deal with fiscal crises and worsen the problem of “autopilot budgeting.”

The LAO primer estimates the state would have to allocate an additional $1.9 billion to the governor’s proposed 2005-06 budget for K-14 education to restore “the real purchasing power of per-pupil K-12 funding at its peak level in 2000-01.”

The LAO and Education Coalition have come to different conclusions about the extent of the cuts to state support for education over the past decade. But in response to a reporter’s question, LAO analyst Robert Manwaring made it clear that the LAO agrees with the education community on at least one major point: in his estimation, Manwaring said, the governor’s claim that his 2005-06 budget would increase school spending by 7.1 percent “is not accurate.”