Education Coalition events dramatize impacts of budget cuts
Published: October 25, 2011
Several schools around California are opening their doors to press conferences, inviting local media to hear from area representatives of the Education Coalition about the impacts of three years of budget cuts and fiscal threats that continue to grow.
At an event in the Sacramento City Unified School District last week, CSBA Region 6 Director Priscilla Cox joined representatives of the Association of California School Administrators, the California State PTA and the certificated and classified employee groups who are also in the Education Coalition. Cox said a fifth of the districts in her six-county region “are at the brink of insolvency” through no fault of their own following three years of cuts in state public education funding.
“As board members, we are elected to represent our communities, maintain fiscal solvency and promote public education—focusing on student achievement. We rely on state funding to do this, and as we know the funding system is broken—inconsistent, inadequate and inconceivably complex,” Cox said in prepared remarks.
“We’re a people business,” with salaries and benefits accounting for as much as 90 percent of districts’ general funds, the Elk Grove Unified School District board president continued, but the district has already been forced to lay off certificated and classified staff and reduce professional development, increase class sizes and make other adjustments.
The Sacramento press conference followed a similar event held a day earlier in the Ravenswood City School District in East Palo Alto, with others tentatively scheduled in Southern California and the Central Valley.
“The cuts we’ve already been forced to make to vital school programs and services in virtually every district in this state have been excruciating and devastating,” Chris Thomsen, a Sequoia Union High School District trustee and member of CSBA’s Delegate Assembly from Region 5, told the Ravenswood CSD gathering.
“It’s become nearly impossible to continue providing the high-quality education our students need today and on which our future depends,” Thomsen said. “The possibility of having to make even more cuts just a few months from now is unthinkable. The state must stop shortchanging the future and provide sufficient revenues to support our students and ensure their success in school and in life.”
Education Coalition speakers cited a recent report from the independent nonprofit California Budget Project. “A Decade of Disinvestment: California Education Spending Near the Bottom,” underscores how far education spending in California has fallen behind the rest of the nation: The state’s schools spent $2,856 less per student than the rest of the United States in 2010-11, for example; California ranks 50th in the nation in the number of teachers per student and the number of librarians per student, and 49th in the number of counselors per student.