Security takes on new meaning in county board’s ‘Statement of Conscience’
Santa Barbara governance team cites duty to speak out on behalf of public schools
Published: March 6, 2012
“If you see something, say something,” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security urges Americans in its public awareness campaign.
The Santa Barbara County Education Office has applied those watchwords to one of the greatest threats facing California today: the steady erosion of resources for the state’s public schools. County schools Superintendent Bill Cirone first made the connection in a commentary published in several area news publications last November. Urging readers to “support what is great about our country, including its educational backbone … and protect what we cherish,” Cirone concluded: “If you see something, say something.”
The Santa Barbara County Board of Education went him one better in January. Foregoing a simple resolution, it adopted a “Statement of Conscience” alluding to the Homeland Security exhortation.
“It is our duty to speak out on behalf of the students and school districts within our jurisdiction,” the 805-word statement says in part. “We see severe danger.…
“Young people today will fly the planes, repair the cars, staff the emergency rooms, and make the policies that affect the generation that follows. Their preparation and education are what will make the difference between our success or failure as a society. This is simple fact,” the statement continues.
“We submit that it is unacceptable and self-defeating for the state to abdicate its responsibility to fund public schools at an adequate level. Studies are unambiguous on how strongly a lack of education correlates with crime, poverty, the need for social services, incarcerations, law enforcement and a whole host of costly interventions. That is the practical need. There is also the moral need for societies to take care of their children.”
Board member Peter R. MacDougall introduced the measure, and Cirone—reportedly California’s longest-serving county superintendent, who’s closing in on his 30th year in the elected post—credits MacDougall with taking the stance beyond a simple resolution.
“He was the one who said we really ought to go beyond that,” Cirone said of MacDougall in an interview last week.
“It is a statement that this situation is intolerable,” MacDougall explained when asked to elaborate. “There’s going to be a price to be paid for this,” he added, noting that the cumulative effects of four years of state budget cuts to education—and a much longer trend of underinvestment, compared to the post-World War II years—have affected “a whole generation of students.”
Like Cirone, MacDougall has long witnessed the effects of short-sighted education investments “all along the spectrum,” as he put it. He’s retired from his longtime post as president of Santa Barbara City College.
The Santa Barbara Unified School District has gone on record “in complete concurrence” with the county board’s statement, whose final words sum up the stakes precisely:
“We do not presume to tell our legislators how they will work the state’s budget to secure the funding necessary to ensure our children receive the education they need and deserve; the logistics of how to go about that task is theirs to decide.
“We are stating emphatically, however, that there is urgent need to do so. The current situation is unsustainable. Education is not a frill; pared down levels of educational services are not an option. The very fabric of our society is at stake. We cannot lose a generation of young people simply because the adults refused to act.”