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Hello everyone—
I wanted to give you a quick update on the state budget situation.
As you may have heard, the Assembly and the Senate finally approved a
long-overdue budget today. The governor helped to broker the deal, and it is
expected he will sign it on Friday.
I’m sure many people in California are feeling a sense of relief that a
budget agreement has been reached at last, after an inexcusable and costly
months-long delay.
Unfortunately, this budget contains an even greater hit to education than had
been previously discussed. The reductions in education funding for the current
year total $2.3 billion; the mid-year and budget-year reductions together total
$8.6 billion. The overall cut to education over this year and next is an almost
unbelievable 15 percent.
The budget is a combination of cuts, revenue increases and borrowing. The
cuts total about $15 billion, which means education’s share of the hit is a
whopping (and disproportionate) 57 percent.
There are across-the-board reductions to many categorical programs. Some
categoricals were protected from cuts, including special education, K-3 Class
Size Reduction, and child nutrition.
The budget also allows school districts to use funding for 43 categorical
education programs for any educational purpose for five years. Among the
programs protected from this flexibility are special education, K-3 class size
reduction, Foster Youth services and Charter School Facility Grants.
Bottom line, our leaders (I use the term loosely) in Sacramento have decided
that education should take a disproportionately greater financial hit than other
budgetary areas. This is not the first time that education has had to take more
than its fair share of the cuts in the state budget process.
I’m both disappointed and baffled at this turn of events.
What’s even more unbelievable is that this apparently was the best they could
do, after dallying until we were almost eight months into the fiscal year.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday--just four weeks after he was
inaugurated--President Obama signed a $787 billion economic recovery package.
We expect the federal stimulus to bring about $5 billion to education in
California over the next two years. We don’t have exact numbers on how all that
will shake out yet, because the funding will be distributed out of—that’s
right—Sacramento.
In any case, while the state school system’s share obviously will be a
welcome relief, by no means will it solve our shortfall. We are still studying
exactly how the new state budget will affect our budget at the COE; but we know
there will have to be cuts, no matter what.
That’s why, as I’ve said before, we will have to send out layoff notices to
administrators and teachers by March 13. But as I have also said before, we will
do everything in our power to maintain our permanent staff, and rescind as many
of those notices as possible by the deadline of May 15.
The challenge lies before us. I have no doubt we at the COE will rise to meet
it, and keep intact our dedication to our goals. Thank you for your patience and
continuing good work as this difficult process has unfolded.
As always, thanks for reading.
--Chuck
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