Forecast: Experts see more hard times ahead
Published: January 25, 2010
School governance teams gathered in more than 200 sites throughout California last month to participate in CSBA’s 2010 Forecast Webcast—a two-hour forum featuring expert analysis of what public schools can expect in the current and coming budget years.
CSBA President Frank Pugh, Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin and Assistant Executive Director for Governmental Relations Rick Pratt joined Jannelle Kubinec, associate vice president of School Services of California Inc., and Christopher Thornberg, founding principal of Beacon Economics, in a detailed discussion of fiscal and policy challenges that lie ahead for schools.
“The unthinkable” has happened to California schools in this budget crisis, Plotkin said. Revenue cuts have eroded basic educational services that are vital to California schoolchildren and pushed record numbers of districts and county offices to look for ways to borrow money.
The grim budgetary times are far from over, the speakers agreed.
Kubinec, for example, warned that 2010 and 2011 may be the toughest for schools yet. Schools have already dealt with funding reductions that amount to about $200 per student, she said. The impacts of these cuts have been softened somewhat by a number of short-term fixes, including federal aid and state flexibility on class-size reduction, but those adjustments are due to expire in the coming years.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget proposal that would require schools to make administrative cuts (see related story on this page) represents a new and unwelcome policy direction, Kubinec continued. In the past, school districts and county offices of education have had considerable discretion about what to cut, rather than being told what to do.
Districts and county offices have already made significant cuts in essential administrative services, Plotkin pointed out, saying California schools have been shown to be among the “most overregulated yet under-administered enterprises in the public sector.”
The local angle
Pugh offered a local perspective on the panel of experts. Funding cuts to his own Santa Rosa City Schools have been devastating, forcing the district to cut a budget of more than $100 million to $88 million so far, the CSBA president said. Pugh and his school board colleagues are looking to cut another $5.6 million this year.
“What people don’t understand is that we are at our wits’ end,” Pugh said. “The sad part is that we are totally re-engineering what schools are going to look like in the future.
“Gone are the safety nets that protected kids and kept them in school,” Pugh continued. “Gone will be the libraries and librarians. Gone will be the traditional academic year, for a period of time. Class sizes will skyrocket and [Advanced Placement] courses that get kids into competitive colleges and universities are going to be gone. We don’t have an awful lot left to pull out of the bag. While we’re kind of glad that the state is running out of tricks to play with our budget, we don’t have much to pull out to save our schools.”
Some good news
The news wasn’t entirely downbeat. Although budget cuts will be necessary, Pratt predicted, he said he did not believe schools will face the kind of midyear “crash” that hit education last year. Nonetheless, he added, schools will need to make many budget cuts in the coming year.
Plotkin also offered some reason for hope.
CSBA and other members of the education community will file a lawsuit against the state this year, Plotkin said, to remedy the underlying flaws in California’s complex and uneven system of school financing. Plotkin said reform of the state budget process is essential so “schools won’t be at the end of the food chain” when it comes to critical funding and policy decisions.
State governance and fiscal reform
Thornberg, the economist, also critiqued California’s fiscal and governmental organization, rejecting assertions that California’s government is too big or its taxes excessive in comparison to other states.
“The problem is that we have dumb taxes,” Thornberg said. “If we could have some kind of comprehensive tax reform, we could increase taxes and make California a more tax-friendly state.”
The nationally regarded economist said he remains bullish on California.
“Patience is the operative word,” Thornberg said. “Over the last decade California has grown faster than the U.S. as a whole in every major category.”
Easy link: