Looking Back: From school finance to teacher tenure 

Issues from decades ago are just as relevant today

This month in 1962, the California School Boards Association Bulletin reported on the goals of CSBA President Kenneth S. Haussler, who had just been reelected for a second term.

“Our basic task is to convince the public that we are producing quality education,” wrote Haussler. “Specifically,

1. In the field of education
To study the basics in education and to try to determine just what we should be educating for. …

2. In the field of school finance
To continue to resist infringement on the local control exercised by responsible school boards to seek an adequate and realistic support for public schools. …

3. In the field of school personnel
To assess the present tenure laws to see if they do achieve the objective of securing high quality competence in teaching rather than the perpetuation of mediocrity.”

CSBA’s Forecast conference in February 1983 laid out “a proposal for massive change in the way schools and local governments are funded.” Project Independence was a joint effort of CSBA, counties and cities for a constitutional amendment to “free schools and local governments from the yearly whim of the state Legislature and shifts in the economy … by tying local funding to combinations of specific percentages of state income, sales and property taxes.”

Meanwhile … next time you flip open your laptop at a café to check your e-mail over a Wi-Fi network, be glad you live in 2006. In November 1983, CSBA member districts could subscribe to CompuServe and get e-mail, news and other limited services for the reduced price of just $5 per hour — a dramatic reduction from the service’s normal rate of $22.50 per hour!