Education Coalition urges governor to protect Prop. 98 school funding

Public school supporters say that when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger releases his revised 2007-08 state budget recommendations on Monday, it’s critical that they include a 4.5 percent cost-of-living increase for K-12 schools and money to reimburse schools for the costs of providing services mandated by the state.

At a press briefing in Sacramento May 8, members of the Education Coalition, including the California School Boards Association, made a comprehensive case for the need to increase K-12 funding beyond the minimum allocation required by Proposition 98.

The recent “Getting Down to Facts” research reports on California’s school finance system concluded that K-12 schools are hampered by excessive top-down regulation and do not have the resources they need to do their jobs.

Despite this, California students have made dramatic academic progress—including steadily improving their passing rates on the California High School Exit Exam and significantly raising their scores on the state’s Standardized Testing and Reporting, or STAR, tests. But coalition leaders warned that schools cannot continue to make progress without adequate funding.
“We will not get to where we want to go as a state if we take a step backward,” said California PTA President-elect Pam Brady, a former member of CSBA’s Board of Directors.

Assertions by the Department of Finance that the governor’s proposed budget recommendations “fully fund education” are very misleading, said Rick Pratt, CSBA’s assistant executive director for governmental relations.

“It means that the budget contains the least amount of money required by Proposition 98,” Pratt said. “This funding is hardly sufficient when it comes down to making sure that our students get every dollar necessary to ensure they’re receiving a high quality education.”

Recent reports from state finance officials indicate that state income tax revenues are exceeding expectations, providing an opportunity for the governor to increase school funding in his so-called “May revise” budget, which is expected to be released May 14.

Pratt and other coalition leaders also said they hope the governor will ignore recommendations by state Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill that the state reduce allocations for public education because, in her view, the governor’s preliminary K-12 budget exceeds minimum Proposition 98 guarantees.

“At the same time the Legislature is contemplating reducing the current year appropriation just because the Proposition 98 formula would allow for it, we have more than $200 million in unpaid K-12 bills,” Pratt said.

Using creative accounting to reduce the state’s Proposition 98 funding obligation does not change the realities facing schools, coalition leaders said.

"The LAO has created the impression that there’s a freebie to be had,” said Bob Wells, executive director of the Association of California School Administrators. “There isn’t.”