Executive director's note: The stakes for education are high in 2012
By:
Vernon M. Billy
The stakes are high in 2012. The state has not fixed its structural deficit, it continues to manipulate Proposition 98, class sizes have steadily increased in many schools, and important student services are being reduced as certificated and classified ranks continue to dwindle. For many educators, the pressure, uncertainty and unprecedented divestment in education seem almost unbearable.
While we are clearly in difficult and uncertain times, school board members must not shrink from their responsibility to govern. It is our response to challenges like these that has historically defined us as a state and nation. Our schools have served as the great equalizer for generations and, at times, as the conscience of California and the country. And they continue to do so even today with the courageous actions of teachers, superintendents and governing boards.
The Santa Barbara County Office of Education’s governing board is taking a stand. Its decision to unanimously approve a “Statement of Conscience” is similar to the nonviolent tactics employed by the greatest of our civil rights leaders. (You can read the statement in the April issue of California School News.)
SBCOE’s statement reminds us that all state legislative decisions at their core are derived from a moral position that ultimately defines who we are as a society—and our future. “We believe it is a moral imperative that those individuals who reaped the rewards from the state’s earlier investment in education do all they can to ensure that comparable educational opportunities are available to young people today,” the statement declares. I agree!
It was the great education expansion of the mid-20th century in California that developed the minds, educational institutions and businesses that propelled the state to one of the world’s largest economies during this period, a position we continue to fight to keep to this day. Now, more than ever, an adequately funded education system is central to our regional, national and global economic competitiveness. Study after study has repeatedly shown that education can aid in reducing poverty and infant mortality, improve the health awareness of individuals and communities, and help create economic opportunity.
This, at the end of the day, is what we are fighting for and why the stakes are so high in 2012. Not just because schools simply cannot sustain more cuts, but because the very fabric of our society—our students and our economy—is hanging in the balance.
There is, perhaps, one last lifeline left to allow us to limp through the next decade and have an opportunity to move from good to great. As of this writing, at least two education funding initiatives appear to be headed to the November ballot. Molly Munger’s “Our Children, Our Future” and the recently merged proposal from Gov. Jerry Brown and the California Federation of Teachers, “The Schools and Local Public Safety Protection Act of 2012,” would provide voters with the opportunity to stave off more reductions in education funding.
Munger’s broad-based tax proposal would provide approximately $7 billion in new funding annually for the first four years and then $10 billion per year for the remaining 12 years. The Brown/CFT proposal would impose an additional quarter-cent sales tax and raise income tax rates on individual taxpayers earning more than $250,000, generating anywhere between $6 billion and $9 billion per year for seven years.
Both measures would provide limited-term funding for schools and result either in the new dollars not counting towards the Proposition 98 guarantee or the sanctioning of a prior $2 billion manipulation of Proposition 98. Both of these scenarios are inconsistent with maintaining the integrity of the state’s main vehicle for funding schools, but these are unprecedented times and the challenges facing schools will be even more difficult without voter approval of one these measures. This is evident in the fact that even if the Brown/CFT measure is enacted, for example, many school districts still would have to cut millions of dollars from their budgets. The hemorrhaging will continue.
CSBA will throw its support behind one of these measures very soon (perhaps before this article goes to print), but we will also be refining our internal operations to support school districts and county offices of education no matter the outcome of the November elections. All this is in hopes of supporting you, our members, better. We have already taken significant steps to do so:
- Last fall, CSBA’s Board of Directors adopted an eight-point Blueprint developed by me and the senior staff that guides our efforts to one main priority: creating enhanced member value.
- In January we implemented a reorganization that for the first time combines all our member (district) services into one department, under one leader, in order to provide more focused support.
- We also established a new senior-level position that focuses on membership development and support.
- Supporting all of these changes and strengthening our efforts to meet our mission of “driving the public education agenda” is our new Policy and Programs Department, which houses our policy and foundation staff and aligns their work in order to strengthen our advocacy and raise our policy influence at the state and national levels.
- I have also directed our staff to begin looking at how we can align our internal work with school district calendars so that what we do provides greater support and guidance to districts and county offices in these difficult times.
As your association, we will be working hard to represent you and the schools that you govern. It’s true, the stakes for education are high in 2012.