Back-to-school briefing: budget problems lie ahead
The new school year is shaping up as a critical period, with “the wheels [already] coming off” a bare-bones state education budget, CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin and Assistant Executive Director Rick Pratt warned in the association’s recent Back-to-School Conference and Webcast.
“Education is not fully funded, and all of the work that we do in our adequacy campaign will be directed toward shining a light on that,” Plotkin vowed, referring to CSBA’s ongoing effort to build public support for education.
Introducing his annual list of “Top Ten” education issues for the new school year, Plotkin joked that “each of the top 10 has subsets of three or four” related topics. But he wasn’t exaggerating the intricacies of the issues; a 16-page, single-spaced background memo outlining the list is nearly 10,000 words long.
CSBA is prepared for a difficult year, but Plotkin held out hope for more positive developments. He praised the governor’s education secretary, Dave Long, and said the education community is prepared to work with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration. He urged his audience to pay close attention to the priorities that Schwarzenegger outlines in his State of the State Address in January. If CSBA agrees with the governor’s school plans, Plotkin said, “great.”
“If not, we’ve already created the entity to drive our agenda,” he continued, referring to the “Learn More California” public outreach campaign to gauge and build support for sufficient funding to match the state’s lofty education standards. (See related story on page 3.)
The organization’s ongoing efforts on behalf of public education at the local, state and national levels will bolster its campaign to build support for truly adequate school funding, Plotkin said; that extensive research and public outreach effort will help position CSBA to play an influential role in the coming “Year of Education” declared by the governor.
Funding ‘deficiencies’
Plotkin’s presentation set the stage for Pratt’s sober assessment of education funding.
“This is probably the most bare-bones budget for schools that I’ve seen in some time,” the long-time Capitol veteran who heads CSBA’s Governmental Relations Department said of the 2007-08 state’s budget. Worse, “The wheels started coming off the wagon” soon after the budget was adopted.
Pratt pointed to a lawsuit challenging a $1.3 billion transfer from the Public Transportation Account—which could directly affect school budgets—as well as the questionable projection of $1 billion in revenues from selling EdFund, the state’s student loan guarantee program, and other factors that threaten to undermine the $102.3 billion budget.
The result could eliminate the projected $4.1 billion general fund reserve, Pratt said. In addition, Proposition 98 did not generate enough money to support existing programs, so $567 million in one-time money is being used to support ongoing costs. Other K-12 needs are unmet: Mandates remain underfunded, declining enrollment continues to undermine payments to more than half of the state’s school districts, and there are more than $65 million in prior-year “deficiencies”—a bureaucratic term for specific expenditures required by law but not adequately funded, such as for supplemental instruction, school nutrition, community day schools and special education.
As in past years, more than one CSBA Back-to-School event was scheduled in order to spread the word widely. Instead of staging in-person presentations in Northern and Southern California, however, the 2007 session was Webcast simultaneously to more than a dozen county offices of education around the state.
“We’re using different forms of technology to provide better outreach to our membership,” explained Jean Dunn-Gallagher, senior director of CSBA’s Continuing Education services, which produces the association’s training events.
Related link: Read “State budget update: Lawsuit threatens home-to-school transportation,” and
other legislative news @ www.csba.org/LegislationAndLegal/Legislation/LegislativeNews.aspx.