SCAMING QEIA

By smf for 4LAKidsNews

May 17, 2012 :: Part of the smoke+mirrors/magical (lack-of) realism) in Governor Brown’s May revise budget is a quiet transfer of the QEIA education reform from outside the Prop 98 guarantee to within Prop 98.

This sounds fair. QEIA (The Quality Education Investment Act) is an effective program, reducing class sizes at challenged schools and producing results – proving that class size matters.

Except that QEIA isn’t a good idea dreamt up by educators and implemented by legislators – it’s a court-imposed settlement and payback to children from prior illegal raids on Prop 98 funding during the Schwarzenegger Administration. And that wrongdoing wasn’t just by Arnold – it was by the legislature controlled by the Democrats. QEIA is a past due debt owed to California schoolchildren being paid back by court order from previous times – and by including it in the current and future funding guarantees it gets subtracted from what today’s children have been guaranteed. We are robbing today’s Peter to payback yesterday’s Paul. And both Peter and Paul are children. 6 million of them in California’s public schools.

It’s like letting victims and their siblings pay the penalty for the crime against them