Vantage Point: California: At the bottom of school funding—again!
By:
CSBA President 'Jo' Lucey
Published: April 1, 2014
In January, Education Week published its annual state-by-state rankings for overall school funding (“Quality Counts 2014”). California came in at the bottom—again!
Granted, the Education Week study uses 2010-11 data (the most recent available), when California and the nation are climbing out of the recession. But funding is relative. We are going to have to climb at a faster rate to rise from the bottom of the comparative listings.
As I’ve been in various meetings in the Capitol and across the state, many of our legislators and key education leaders have mentioned Prop 30 and how great it is to see revenue flowing into our schools. And they’re right about that! But when they call it “new” money they are wrong. What no one ever says is that the “new” money schools are getting this year is not really new. It’s money we used to have. It’s money that schools should have had. It’s money students needed us to have.
Public education took a 20 percent cut in funding during the recession. The “new” money that the state has allocated to public education for 2014 is rebuilding a statewide system that was decimated. Even if the Local Control Funding Formula’s projected levels are met, it won’t be until 2020-21 that all districts are back to the levels they were at in 2007-08. Thirteen years later and we are back where we started.
While I think we should celebrate this year’s education budget, we also have an obligation to remind our legislators, the press and the public just how low overall California public education funding really is. Prior to Prop 13 we were among the top states in the nation. At a minimum, we ought to be at the national average. And until we are back in the top, we shouldn’t be celebrating.
It would be one thing if our funding was low simply because our capacity is low, but California is the eighth-largest economy in the world—and still we can’t figure out how to reasonably and adequately fund the schools to which we send our own children. Our funding level is a result of choice, not capacity. We need to be more vocal about the long-term effects of underfunding our schools, particularly in a year where the public sentiment seems to be “problem solved.”
Public education is the engine that drives our economy. It is the pipeline for our next generation of leaders. The future of our economy, and the fabric of our communities, depend upon our ability to provide current students with an education that will enable them to be productive, contributing members of our increasingly knowledge- and technology-based society.
So let’s be honest about our education budget this year. Yes, it’s better than last year. And that’s a good thing. But it’s not where it should be. It’s not where it needs to be. We have a long way to go. Fiftieth in the nation is nothing to celebrate.