Vantage point: Are we near a tipping point?
By:
CSBA President Martha Fluor
Published: December 1, 2011
If the saying is true that “time flies quickly when you’re having fun,” then I’ve had a ton of fun during my year as your president. I can hardly believe that my term is almost over, because it feels like I barely scratched the surface of my list of things I wanted to accomplish. I’m told by my predecessors that this is a common feeling, and I’m proud of what CSBA has been able to achieve in 2011.
There is much work before us, and I’m looking forward to working with incoming President Jill Wynns to ensure that CSBA continues to improve and enhance the services that we provide to member districts and county offices.
We’ve talked so much about the challenges and crises facing public schools that I’m sure there are many who think we’re a broken record. But continue to talk we must, because just acknowledging the challenges is not enough. Our state leaders have to start doing something, or our future as a state is in jeopardy. Our children are our most precious resource, and right now there is no doubt that we are not doing right by them. We simply have to do better.
For a long time, we’ve also been talking about the need to reform the entire governance structure of California. I’ve often wondered what the tipping point would be to convince the people of California to actually do something about it. And there is reason to believe that 2012 might be the year when something actually happens.
Currently, there are two initiatives under development that would try to fix the state’s dysfunctional government system. One is the result of ongoing work from California Forward, which has prepared an initiative they’re calling the Government Performance and Accountability Act. The most ambitious component of their proposal would give counties, in partnership with cities, school districts and special districts, the authority and the incentives to develop a Community Strategic Action Plan that ultimately would lead to the authority to reallocate among each entity locally levied sales and property taxes—while protecting the portion of the property tax that is already allocated to schools.
The second, and even more ambitious proposal, comes from the Think Long Committee for California, which includes former governors Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Assembly Speakers Willie Brown and Robert Hertzberg, former Secretaries of State George Schulz and Condoleezza Rice, and a host of other luminaries. The committee calls its proposal a “bipartisan path to the future,” but the component of the plan that will likely result in the greatest amount of public attention is the proposal to reduce tax rates across the board for every bracket and reduce the sales tax on goods from 5 percent to 4.5 percent, while at the same time broadening the sales tax at a 5 percent rate to apply to services—with education and medical care being exempted.
There are bold and controversial ideas contained in both initiatives. But never before has there been such a need to be bold, and even controversial. Our kids are depending on us to do something.