CSBA, other groups push for school funding as rumors of budget deal swirl

As lawmakers in Sacramento attempted to lay the groundwork for a deal—possibly this weekend—to break the nearly seven-week stalemate on a state budget, CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin and other Education Coalition leaders took a stand for public schools today at a press conference on the steps of the Capitol building.

Plotkin and other senior representatives of the Education Coalition voiced their support for the budget proposal advanced in July by the Legislature’s Senate-Assembly Conference Committee. That revenue and spending plan would restore $2.4 billion of the $4.3 billion that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed cutting from public education.

Speakers also strongly opposed Assembly Constitutional Amendment 19 and any other spending cap that might emerge in alternative proposals to limit growth in expenditures and give the governor the power to make unilateral midyear spending cuts during difficult budget years.

“The proposals in ACA 19 would absolutely undermine Proposition 98,” the minimum funding guarantee for schools that voters added to the state constitution in 1988, Plotkin told reporters.

“We’re not producing widgets on an assembly line that you simply slow down,” Plotkin said of the state’s nearly 10,000 public schools. “Midyear budget cuts are absolutely untenable for schools.”

Instead of cuts to education, Plotkin continued, the state should be finding ways to increase its investment in education—a conclusion shared in volumes of independent research such as “Getting Down to Facts,” the exhaustive studies of school funding and governance commissioned by state officials and released through Stanford University in 2007. California would have to increase its education spending by as much as 40 percent to provide the level of funding needed to meet the state’s own high academic standards, according to those studies.

As things stand, California ranks near the bottom of the 50 states in per-pupil spending, Plotkin said, adding, “That is a national disgrace.”

Developments inside the Capitol, meanwhile, remain sketchy and subject to change. Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, is reportedly pushing for a floor vote this weekend on some modified version of the Conference Committee budget that would provide less funding for education. Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, also hopes for a floor vote in his chamber soon.

The Legislature must act fast in order to get essential elements of Republican budget plans requiring voter approval, such as ACA 19, on the Nov. 4 election ballot. Two-thirds approval is needed in each chamber to pass a budget, so at least some Republican votes are necessary for a deal.

Related link:

Find more information about the budget and CSBA’s efforts to protect and promote education spending on our Web page, “Schools: An Investment We Can’t Afford to Cut,” @ www.csba.org/EducationIssues/EducationIssues/SchoolsInvestment.aspx.