Executive director’s note

Of agendas, appointments, courts and reports

Well, it was bound to happen. I’ve been blasted in a blog (that’s a World Wide Web log—think of it as an online journal that allows every Tom, Dick and Harry to broadcast their thoughts to the world) for taking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to task for not having an “education agenda” this year.

I’d said our governor was only concerned with promoting his desire to make it easier for parents to shop online for schools—“just like shopping for a car,” as he puts it. My comments were in the last issue of California Schools, where I also decried the departure of Alan Bersin as the governor’s secretary for Education and worried about what that might portend.

Well, Gov. Schwarzenegger still doesn’t have much of an education agenda, but at least he’s done something worth noting—by starting to surround himself with folks who can play a big part in helping him to develop one. We should all feel pretty good about that.

The governor appointed Riverside County Superintendent of Schools David Long to be his new secretary for Education, and soon afterward Scott Hill was named undersecretary for Education. A distinguished educator with a strong reputation, Dr. Long brings an unmatched record with him to the Governor’s Office. I have no doubt that he will be a powerful and knowledgeable voice in the administration, bringing a realistic perspective about what goes on in the real world of kids and schools.

Mr. Hill is a former chief deputy state superintendent of public instruction—and, it should be noted, a former policy analyst at CSBA. He is one of those rare policy and political experts with a depth and breadth of knowledge and understanding about public policy that can only inform and illuminate discussions of education reform. We absolutely applaud the governor for these appointments.

Applause is in order, too, for the parents of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the district itself and other friends of local, lawful control of local schools. They beat back a determined attempt to undermine the proper governance of the state’s largest school system through Assembly Bill 1381, the legislation enacted last year to allow a partial takeover of the Los Angeles Unified School District by the mayor of Los Angeles.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has now dropped any plans to appeal to the state Supreme Court. CSBA has said all along that mayors and school boards can work together in many different ways to meet the needs of school children. We thank the mayor for recognizing that the best way to accomplish our mutual goals is to work with, rather than against, the governance team of LAUSD, and we look forward to a new era of partnership in the service of the district’s 708,000 students.

It is time to put this dispute behind us and get down to the hard work of creating real partnerships between LAUSD and the various municipalities it serves. We need to shift the focus back to kids and the challenges they face in their communities—which too often follow the kids to the schoolhouse door.

Finally, and after much anticipation, we are “Getting Down to Facts”—the name of 23 related studies of California education commissioned by the legislative leadership, the state superintendent, and the governor and recently released by Stanford University. Covering about 1,700 pages, the reports touch on a variety of topics, all designed to provide a basis for sensible and coherent dialog about the public schools. They don’t offer much that can be considered recommendations, but they should provide a bit of a roadmap for the year of school reform that the governor has proclaimed will come in 2008.

Regrettably, the rollout of the reports resulted in a lot of bad press coverage—sensational warnings against “dumping more money into a failed system” and the like. Well, as you have no doubt seen in many of the articles that followed up the initial presentation of the reports, it’s a lot more complicated than that.

Most folks who have reviewed the studies are prepared now to have far more thoughtful conversations about the subject. I am very pleased that CSBA—on behalf of the Education Coalition—has been at the forefront of a public engagement campaign that’s been on a parallel track with the now-released research reports, and which is positioned to become the basis for sensible discussion.

With generous funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, CSBA, the California PTA, Children Now, and the League of Women Voters have been laying the groundwork this past year for a crucial process of coalition-building and public engagement that we call the School Finance Exploration Project. We’ve found a growing recognition all around the state of the disconnect between having academic standards that are among the highest in the 50 states while having per-pupil funding that is among the lowest. This issue has to be addressed for anything meaningful to occur.

We’ve talked to opinion leaders, journalists, politicians and major representatives of the business community. Several shared core values have emerged so far:

• academic and fiscal accountability
• transparency and accessibility to information
• stability and flexibility in funding
• the need for core resources—in a word, “adequacy”
• focus and equity in funding and programs for the kids and schools most in need

I am very pleased to report that the Hewlett Foundation has been so impressed with our work so far that it has renewed our grant funding for an additional two years.

So, as usual, there is a lot going on at CSBA. We have scored successes in the Legislature and the courts, and we have received important recognition for the hard work we have taken up on behalf of the public schools in California. We are engaged in other campaigns, such as the one for sensible and coherent amendments to the federal No Child Left Behind Act as Congress considers its reauthorization this year—CSBA’s president, Dr. Kathy Kinley, has made this a major focus for the association.

We gladly take on these tasks, but we couldn’t accomplish any of them without the active support of our members—you—and for that we are very grateful.