THE MAY 19 BALLOT MEASURES

The State Legislative Analyst’s Office has prepared a summary and analysis for each of the six measures.

The Secretary of State has now posted the ballot summaries, arguments for and against, and other information.

Day 106 | 6:17 AM: SENATE APPROVES BUDGET PLAN!

Senate approves budget plan

The state Senate voted early Thursday to approve a massive budget package of tax increases, spending cuts and borrowing to close a $40 billion deficit after granting major concessions to one holdout Republican senator.
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• Maldonado's price for budget vote: 3 constitutional amendments

STATE HELD HOSTAGE

Sacramento Bee cartoonist Rex Babin

FOLLOW THE LEADER: The federal stimulus package should serve as an impetus to state legislators to fully fund the education system.

By Senior Editorial Board | The Daily Californian Online

The Daily Californian is an independent, student-run newspaper serving the UC Berkeley campus and its surrounding community, publishing Monday through Friday during the academic year and twice a week during the summer. Established in 1871, The Daily Californian is one of the oldest newspapers on the West Coast and one of the oldest college newspapers in the country.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - Year in and year out, the fate awaiting California's education system has been the same-cut after cut after cut. State legislators, though alleged believers in education as the greatest investment for the future, have yet to demonstrate that belief with adequate state funding.

Last week, the federal government acted on that belief when the U.S. House of Representatives passed President Obama's $819 billion stimulus package, a much-needed jolt designed to create jobs.

The package could translate into millions of dollars for California's public schools and higher education systems, the University of California and the California State University.

If passed in the U.S. Senate, those critical funds will go towards infrastructure on university campuses, saving jobs in California's school districts and a $500 boost to the maximum Pell Grant award amount.

This significant show of support for education, especially in a time when funding is being cut left and right, is something we firmly stand behind and hope to see become a priority in Obama's administration.

The funding, unfortunately, can only go so far. Bill Huyett, superintendent of Berkeley schools, has already said that because of state funding decreases, the federal funds won't be enough to dramatically improve the quality of education.

Furthermore, although the package's provisions for financial aid and research could help the university greatly, state budget cuts are still projected to continue.

As of Sunday, $13 million in Cal Grants are being delayed by the State Controller's Office, plus millions of dollars in tax refunds-a move that is certain to hurt thousands of UC students dependent on those funds.

Rather than eliminating the need for state funds, the stimulus package reinforces the importance that funding for education should carry; state legislators ought to take a cue from the President and Congress and immediately resolve to pass a budget that prioritizes education.

SCHOOL GAINS ARE PUT AT RISK

Mockler: “The budget bell is ringing for California's schools to take a recessionary recess from reform.”

George Skelton, Capitol Journal | LA Times

January 12, 2009 -- From Sacramento -- It's inevitable that California public schools soon will be whacked with hefty program cuts. And that's a shame because students recently have been making significant gains.
A decade of academic advancement due to class-size reduction, tougher curriculum, higher standards, testing, accountability and other reforms could be stalled -- even reversed -- by the necessity to cut spending.

But there's no way around it. When the state's general fund is projected to be nearly $42 billion in the hole by the middle of next year and the cost of kindergarten-through-community college eats up roughly 40% of that fund, schools must take a hit, even after the probable tax increases.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed shorting schools $2.1 billion during the rest of this academic year and $3.1 billion the next. Perhaps most eye-opening, he'd save the state $1.1 billion by cutting off money for one week's worth of instruction. The number of school days would be reduced to 175 from 180.

"It's a loss of learning opportunities," notes state Supt. Of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell. "Only eight states have fewer than 180 days."

Among other cuts, Schwarzenegger has proposed saving $114 million by eliminating a special program to bolster learning in "low-performing" schools. Democrats have suggested the same thing.

Also in jeopardy are class-size reduction, advanced placement programs for the university-bound, extra help for English learners, special ed, summer school, counseling, gifted programs, arts and music and a long list of other "categorical" programs that local districts would be free to cannibalize to make ends meet.

"If we were a baseball team, we'd be playing with seven players to the other team's nine and still be expected to beat them," says veteran education consultant John Mockler, referring to California's challenge in educating the most diverse school population in the nation -- 25% are English learners -- on relatively sparse rations.

A new report by Education Week, a national publication, ranks California 47th among the states in per-pupil spending, "adjusted for regional cost differences."

Mockler says that 4.4% of Californians' personal income is spent on public schools. By comparison, it was 5.6% in 1972 when Ronald Reagan was governor. That 1.2% difference, he says, is the equivalent of $22 billion. "Bring back Ron, I say."

A bit about Mockler: He's not exactly a household name, except around the Capitol, where he is a legend. The pony-tailed ed guru has been at the center of most education policy debates as a legislative staffer, gubernatorial appointee or consultant for 44 years.

Only a handful of people truly understand the complexities of school finance. And nobody does better than Mockler because he wrote the law: Proposition 98. Sponsored by the California Teachers Assn. and approved by voters in 1988, Prop. 98 basically guarantees K-12 schools and community colleges 40% of the general fund.

But it's far from that simple. And Mockler, 67, has made a very good living explaining, manipulating and protecting Prop. 98. "It allowed me to send my two kids to college," he says, grinning.

"Schwarzenegger once came over to me and said, 'I think I understand. Every time I screw with Prop. 98, you get richer.' "

Mockler is currently on a crusade to prove that California is getting its money's worth on schools. He stopped me in a cross-walk to deliver his pitch.

"If you only read newspapers or listened to talk shows, you'd think high schools were places of violence and sloth and didn't do squat," he said. "The system's not perfect. But there's significant improvement.

"It's not true that the sky's falling."

He offered some testing data from the Department of Education covering the last five years:

• There has been a 31% gain in students of all grades who score "proficient" or "advanced" in reading. (In 2003, 35% did; by 2008 the figure was up to 46%.)
• For math, there has been a 23% gain (from 35% to 43%.)
• The figures are most dramatic for targeted groups that started at a lower base. Among Latinos, there was a 60% gain into the higher reading levels (from 20% of students to 32%.) For blacks, 50% tested higher (from 22% to 33%.) And for the "educationally [economically] disadvantaged" the rise was 60% (from 20% to 32%).
• These groups also showed significant gains in math testing: 43% higher for Latinos, 47% for blacks and 37% for educationally disadvantaged.
• And a lot more kids overall have been taking high-end math and science courses.

The actual "achievement gap" -- the difference between the higher scores of whites and Asians versus the lower results of blacks and Latinos -- has not narrowed much, although it did begin to budge last year. But a bigger percentage of blacks and Latinos are improving.

Mockler says it's likely the budget cuts will slow the gains, but not reverse them.

O'Connell isn't so sure. He fears that the cuts threaten "a major setback" in efforts to close the achievement gap. "More than 1.5 million English learners attend school in California. It's critical to our entire state's economic future that they succeed and are well prepared for the competitive global economy."

"We're making progress," he adds. "It's slow, it's hard, it's incremental. But we've been on the right track. Reducing the school year, in particular, would be a step backward."

Unfortunately, the budget bell is ringing for California's schools to take a recessionary recess from reform.

“California at the Edge of a Cliff”: STATE FALLS IN EDUCATION RANKS

By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | Los Angeles Newspaper Group

January 8 - Once regarded as a national leader in higher education, California is quickly falling in the ranks as fewer young people graduate from high school and enroll in college, according to a report released Wednesday by the California Faculty Association.

In its investment in public higher education and college degree attainment, the state ranks has plunged.

California ranked 49th in the country in terms for its number of adults with at least a high school diploma, 46th for the number of 19-year-olds enrolled in college and 31st for college enrollment among students in low-income families.

And over the last three decades the state's investment in public higher education has dropped 40 percent - dropping from 11th in the nation to 22nd despite having the country's largest public higher education system.

"It's a collapse, folks," said Tom Mortensen, author of the report "California at the Edge of a Cliff: The Failure to Invest in Public Higher Education is Crushing the Economy and Crippling our Kids' Futures."

"This is a staggering commentary on this state's commitment to higher education."

Lillian Taiz, president of California State Faculty Association who commissioned the report, said the statistics should be a message to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"For the past several years we have been trying to draw attention to the fact that these cuts have real serious consequences," Taiz said.

"It is utterly hypocritical for the governor to call for job creation out of one side of his mouth while he cuts higher education funding from the other side."

The 2008-09 state budget cut funding for the CSU system twice - a midyear cut of $66.3 million and a $31.3 million one-time cut - and cut the UC system's funding by $48 million. The CSU system also cut enrollment for the 2009-10 year and the UC system will be discussing cutting enrollment at a meeting later this month.

"The governor has always been a large proponent of higher education, but unfortunately in this national economic downturn the state faces a $41.6 billion budget gap, and like families and companies across the state we must tighten our belts," said Camille Anderson, a spokeswoman for the governor.

Anderson also said that the governor has proposed a $644 million increase to higher education funding over last year.

---

RELATED:

California at the Edge of a Cliff report

---

from the report:

 

Get Real: There is a simply staggering and growing gulf between demographic reality and higher education policy in California.

• On the demographic side the share of California’s K-12 students approved for subsidized school lunches hasincreased from 35.2% in 1989 to 51.5% by 2007, and this share will increase much further and probably rapidlyand indefinitely in future years.
• These students will have zero resources to pay for higher education when they reach college age. But they also represent a growing share of California’s future workforce that must be higher educated for the most valuable work to be done in the Human Capital Economy.
  
• On the policy side California has reduced its higher education investment effort by 40 percent since FY1980. This means that public colleges and universities have raised tuitions to offset losses in state support. The state has been shifting the costs of operating its universities from state taxpayers to students and their families since 1980.
  
• These students from low family income backgrounds face huge financial barriers to California’s universities and thestate’s financial aid efforts fall very far short of meeting student needs.

more o’ the same news…:

• Study shows California's deteriorating situation in higher education
  Xinhua, China -
  LOS ANGELES, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- California, once regarded as a leader in the United States for its public higher education system, is quickly dropping in ...
• Cal State union releases report on negative budget-cut consequences
  89.3 KPCC, CA - A new report indicates that California has fallen from the top to the bottom quarter of states in the percentage of high school graduates who proceed to ...
• Cal State report predicts harmful consequences from education cuts
  89.3 KPCC, CA - Many students from low-income families earn college degrees at the 23 Cal State University campuses. KPCC's Patricia Nazario reports on a study the union ...
• New study shows California's deteriorating educational status
  Contra Costa Times, CA -
  California ranks next to last in states where the adult population has at least a high school education, according to a report released today by the ...

TODAY @ A State without a Budget/A Government without a Clue…

CALIFORNIA'S CAR TAX MAY BE ON THE ROAD AGAIN: THE VEHICLE LICENSE FEE THAT GOT GRAY DAVIS RECALLED AND ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER ELECTED LOOKS LIKE A GOOD IDEA… AGAIN.

An LA  Times editorial points out that the Car Tax/VLF served California well for 60 years. Undoing it has failed the state for six years. Until last year reimplementing it would have actually balanced (or come close to balancing) the budget. It's not enough anymore, but it's got to be on the table. Along with spitting the rolls on Prop 13 …but one sacred cow/third rail/taboo metaphor at a time.

And as Gordon Gecko said  “Greed is Good!”  Imagine how good it can be when driven by panic: Two LA Times articles describe how Wells Fargo Bank and Goldman Sachs – subsidized by the Feds - appear to be enriching themselves and their clients at California's expense

 

GOLDMAN SACHS URGED BETS AGAINST CALIFORNIA BONDS IT HELPED SELL

The Wall Street titan's activities could have harmed taxpayers, officials say

Goldman, Sachs & Co. urged some of its big clients to place investment bets against California bonds this year despite having collected millions of dollars in fees to help the state sell some of those same bonds.

BUSH'S TAX BREAKS FOR BANKS COULD COST CALIFORNIA $2 BILLION

Wells Fargo is state's chief beneficiary of change that allows banks to write off losses when taking over failing institutions.

Even as California's fiscal woes mount, the state is slated to lose an additional $2 billion in coming years as a result of new tax breaks the Bush administration created for a small group of banks including California-based Wells Fargo.

BLAMING CLARK KERR + HIGHER EDUCATION FIGHTS BUDGET PROPOSED CUTS IN CALIFORNIA

by smf  | 4LAKIDS

In a recent fundraising appeal from the UCLA Alumni Association Sherry Lansing - a regent of the University of California and former CEO of Paramount Pictures - writes under the provocative headline: "It’s Clark Kerr’s fault":

“Forty-seven years ago, the president of the University of California introduced an idealistic, untested and truly immodest plan to build the finest public higher education system in the nation.

“Happily, Doctor Kerr’s Master Plan succeeded, but there was an unforeseen consequence: It overperformed.

“Today, California’s public universities rank among the most highly regarded universities, public or private, in the nation or the world. Period.

“So, how can UCLA maintain that momentum, that excellence? How do we nourish this priceless community asset, this spectacular economic engine that enriches us all?

“Start with this reality check: “California state government funding for the university system has gone from 42% a generation ago to less than 18% today. And that money’s not coming back.

“One last thought: The future has been around for a very long time. It will be there tomorrow. But now is now.

'The momentum, the excellence, the need is now.”

 

Ms Lansing, if anything, underdescribes the impact, scope and sheer  audacity of Clark Kerr's plan, which created the UC system as we know it …and also the CSU system and the Community College system, an overarching blueprint that reaffirmed California's long-time commitment to the principle of tuition-free education to residents of the state and a seat in the program — a promise that is being broken to current and future generations California students. The 1960 Master Plan did establish the principle that students should pay fees for auxiliary costs like dormitories and recreational facilities …but in succeeding years tuition has been imposed and then raised regularly in UC, CSU and Community College programs

Budget cutters, bean counters and sellers of the concept that excellence is unaffordable have trimmed, nibbled and line-item-vetoed away the California Master Plan for Higher Education, a law that remains on the books.

And Ms. Lansing sets her sights and expectations too low when she says that money is not coming back; as a regent she needs to audaciously, immodestly and abashedly insist otherwise.

Yes , there is room and opportunity and need for alumni and corporate and foundation support for higher ed; for donations and fundraisers. As there is for bake sales and gift wrap drives in K-12.

But just as charging tuition means it's not free, corporate funding and charitable funding of public education is not public education.

¡Onward/Hasta adelante! - smf

HIGHER EDUCATION FIGHTS BUDGET PROPOSED CUTS IN CALIFORNIA

Julie Small - KPCC Radio

May 8, 2008 — California's three institutions of higher education have joined forces. They want to fight off a billion dollars in proposed budget cuts. They say if Sacramento makes the cuts, California's public colleges and universities will have to turn away tens of thousands of students next year. KPCC's Julie Small has more.

Julie Small: It's been almost 50 years since California adopted the Master Plan for Higher Education. The plan guaranteed admission to the University of California for the top one-eighth of the state's high school graduates. The top one-third would be assured places at California State University campus.

And all of the state's high school students could attend community college. Best of all, the Master Plan said all of those high school students could attend college "tuition-free." California Community College Chancellor Diane Woodruff says the Master Plan's authors set the gold standard for college admission.

Diane Woodruff: It was the first time in history that a state, or a nation, promised that there would be a spot in higher education for every single high school graduate, and that if you attended a community college and worked hard enough, that you too could transfer to the best universities in the world.

Small: Take last year. About a hundred thousand students transferred from community colleges to four-year universities in California. A third of the UC's graduates, and a hefty 60% of the grads from the CSU system, transferred in. That's the way the system's supposed to work. But University of California Provost Rory Hume warns that the state's proposed budget cuts could throw higher education into reverse.

Rory Hume: It's at risk today, it's at risk from a level of cuts that is unprecedented in its cumulative effects.

Small: Budget cuts could mean a freeze on hiring faculty, and Hume says that could cost the UC a lot of young and talented professors.

Hume: We won't be able to hire the best and the brightest young people. They'll go to, very probably, the Ivy League. We won't be able to retain the best people as their careers mature.

Small: The UC might have to freeze enrollment, too. Students who can't get into the UC often head to the CSU, but they may find that door closing, too. Chancellor Charles Reed says the CSU turned away 10,000 students this year. The students who did get in could be asked to pay an extra 10% in fees. That's almost $300 a year; even then, that won't cover the millions in cuts.

Charles Reed: We're going to have larger class sizes. We're going to provide less student services, academic advising, and help to students if we have to cut back. We're going to have fewer administrators, and fewer administrative services.

Small: Students who can't get into the UC or CSU, or who can't afford the higher fees, can still find a place at one of 109 California community colleges. But Community College Chancellor Diane Woodruff says the budget cuts could mean many more students, but a lot fewer classes.

Woodruff: Because our community colleges are open access institutions and we're not able to limit the enrollment the way UC and CSU do, the real impact is that even when students get in, they can't get the classes that they need to transfer or to graduate on time.

Small: Instead of cutting education funding, CSU Chancellor Charles Reed says the state should raise taxes to invest more.

Reed: California, as a state, has got to increase its revenue so that it can provide the government services that most good, healthy states provide.

Small: Reed says California's higher education system produces a skilled workforce that attracts employers, and keeps the state running. Without that magnet, he says, California's economy could lose jobs to states willing to pay a little more for higher education.