Looking Back: Food for thought, machinery for action
Published: March 1, 2006
“This is Volume 1, No. 1, of the official bulletin of the California School Trustees Association,” announced the March 1942 California School Trustees Bulletin, published then in Bakersfield.
“Launching a new bulletin is rather like launching a trading vessel upon her maiden voyage,” observed Margaret H. Strong, president of the “California Congress P.-T. A.” in a congratulatory message in that inaugural issue. “With salvoes of good wishes, followed by high hopes, she gets underway. Laden with food for thought and machinery for action, she reaches her consignees, and if all goes well, makes a rich return of good will and improved procedure.”
The association turned another sort of page in its March 1953 issue.
“Mrs. I. E. Porter submitted her resignation as Executive Secretary of the Association, to the Executive Board at the regular meeting held in Sacramento March 21st,” the Bulletin reported in March 1953. That brief notice marked the retirement of the woman who had guided the association since its founding in 1931 — 75 years ago now, a milestone CSBA is commemorating with features in our monthly newsletter and quarterly magazine leading up to a celebration at the Annual Education Conference in San Francisco this November.
The ides of March often lead school officials to look to Sacramento for omens and portents of the next budget year, as Joseph M. Brooks did in a March 1969 editorial in “California School Boards,” as the monthly publication was called then.
“Governor Reagan is to be commended for including $80,000,000 of new money for California’s public schools in his budget. Eighty million dollars is the most significant amount for increased school support ever recommended by a California Governor,” Brooks wrote.
“Unfortunately, since 1965 the annual percentage increase in the current cost of education K-12 in California has averaged 7.7%. No one can foresee how 1969-70 will be any different.”
Or 2006-07, for that matter. One thing certainly won’t change: CSBA’s publications will continue to be “laden with food for thought and machinery for action.”