Bersin open to dialogue about public school funding needs 

Urging CSBA delegates to help him negotiate peace between warring political factions that have left education reform in “an awful quagmire,” California Education Secretary Alan Bersin agreed that it’s time to ask voters what it would take for them to support tax increases for schools.

In a wide-ranging speech to the association’s Delegate Assembly during CSBA’s Annual Education Conference in San Diego on Dec. 1, Bersin also said that talks are already under way about meeting the state’s obligations to restore funds owed schools under Proposition 98 – an obligation the governor previously denied.

In fact, signs of a thaw between the governor’s office and schools were already evident. The day before his Delegate Assembly speech, Bersin and other key members of the governor’s staff met with representatives from CSBA and other members of the Education Coalition to resume discussions about the disputed pact.

In another sign of the changing post-special election world, Bersin said it’s clear that state support for California schools has been on the decline for decades.

“No one – no one – can look at the history of California education over the past generation and not notice that we went from first to worst,” he said.

Bersin, former San Diego City Unified School District superintendent and a current member of the state Board of Education, blamed “the revenue limits that we now live under” for the decline. He called for an end to the “gridlock” between unyielding anti-tax forces and “those of us on the district level (who) are faced with absolute requirements for additional resources,” both for teaching and learning and for labor costs. He asked CSBA to help start the conversation with Californians about finance reform and the potential need to raise taxes.

“CSBA has a major, major role to play in this,” he said. “We can’t continue to have this totally unproductive gridlock between ‘No new taxes’ and ‘We need more money.’ It’s organizations with the kind of credibility and, frankly, the skilled leadership like the CSBA that have got to start to help us bridge this.”

Bersin said he is “open and eager” to help find out “the conditions under which we can talk to Californians about increasing taxes.”

But, he added, school advocates must be willing to give voters necessary assurances that any additional tax revenues “will be used productively on behalf of children and teachers.”

”We’ve got to be very specific about it,” he said. “I’m hoping that the CSBA again will take a leadership role in the context of the adequacy discussions that are beginning in California to help find a way to bridge this.”

Going to court to get more money for schools hasn’t worked in other states, he said. “The last thing we want to have happen in California is to have this decided in a litigation context, like in New York, where you have a huge judgment (ordering the state to increase school funding) and no political capacity to implement it.”

Bersin also promised to continue working to resolve conflicts between the state’s school accountability system and requirements for school performance under the No Child Left Behind Act.

He thanked CSBA for being part of an Education Coalition that “put out the hand” to the state administration after this year’s bitter special election campaign. In November, voters rejected all of the governor’s ballot initiatives, including Proposition 76, which CSBA and other coalition members argued was a serious assault on minimum school funding guarantees under Proposition 98.

“It would be foolish to pretend we don’t have a lot of healing to do,” Bersin said.

CSBA and other members of the coalition mounted an aggressive campaign to defeat the measure because it would have seriously undermined minimum funding guarantees to schools and nullified an agreement between the coalition, the governor and state Legislature to restore to education money owed schools under terms of Proposition 98.

Bersin said the governor got the message sent by voters last month. “His reaction to the election, I think, should be comforting to those who think he does not know how to read election returns. He does,” Bersin said.

Now it’s time to move forward, he said. “Help us, help us,” he urged delegates. “We all have to start back together, and you at CSBA have set a good example.”