LAYOFFS, LARGER CLASS SIZES AND FEWER INSTRUCTIONAL DAYS ADDING STRESS
A new report says 6.2 million K-12 students in California’s 30 largest school districts may not reach their full academic potential. Contributing factors to the problem are teacher layoffs, larger class sizes, fewer instructional days, fewer counselors, cutbacks in summer school, declining enrollments, increasing childhood poverty, and high unemployment.
“The number and intensity of internal and external stress factors on California schools and school districts are on the rise as a result of state budget deficits and the nation’s struggling economy,” says the research organization Edsource in a report titled Schools Under Stress: Pressures Mount on California’s Largest School Districts.
Even before the Great Recession, California was spending less per student than the national average, according to the California Budget Project. In 2001–02, California spent $691 less per student than the national average. By 2010–11, the gap had grown to $2,856.
Making matters worse is the dysfunctional school finance system, shaped partly by Proposition 13, passed in 1978. One result of Proposition 13 was shifting public schools financing from local communities to the state. It also made it tougher for local school districts to raise revenues, according to Edsource.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s solution is to ask voters to increase the sales tax by a quarter-cent on the dollar and to raise income taxes on individuals making more than $250,000 a year, according to the Sacramento Bee. The ballot measure, Proposition 30, will be decided this November.
A different plan on the ballot, Proposition 38, “would provide seven times more to the schools than Gov. Brown’s plan,” according to the measure’s author, Molly Munger.
“Sacramento will be kept out of the loop by putting the money in a trust fund that automatically goes to the school districts on a per-child basis,” Munger said on the NBC television show Class Action.
She said it is not necessary to choose between the two plans. Voting yes on both propositions would require the one gathering the most votes to be employed.
Munger said her plan has the support of the 900,000-member PTA.
“California must move to relieve its schools of some of the stresses that threaten to smother their attempts to help children succeed. If it is unable to do so, the academic gains California schools and students have been striving for the past two decades will become an even more elusive target. In addition, major new reforms, such as the Common Core State Standards, new accountability measures, and linking schoolwork more closely to student careers, will be far more difficult to implement,” concludes Edsource.
Proposition 38’s details can be found at www.ourchildrenourfuture2012.com.
