Delegate Assembly gears up for year of passionate and effective advocacy
Published: January 1, 2010
Members of CSBA’s Delegate Assembly met in San Diego Dec. 2-3 to get up-to-the-minute legislative, fiscal and policy updates, elect new officers and directors and rally support for a new advocacy campaign to restore funding to California’s beleaguered public schools.
Having survived an extremely difficult year during which California’s per-pupil spending dropped precipitously, delegates shared stories of resilience and hope—even as they grappled with news that fiscal forecasts could worsen still more.
California faces a “lingering” general fund shortfall of about $20 billion that will last through the 2014-15 fiscal year, CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin warned in his report, “A Call to Action in Hard Times.”
“Our deficit has been huge and it’s going to get even bigger,” Plotkin said. In addition to continuing state deficits, schools will also see the disappearance of billions of dollars in temporary federal stimulus funds over the next two years.
“There’s no way that the Legislature, the governor and voters can avoid making additional, very difficult choices about state priorities,” Plotkin said.
At the same time that school budgets are shrinking, he added, state and federal accountability rules—many of which have little or no relevance to the problems that California schools face—continue to multiply. Plotkin said he was disappointed with both the new federal “Race to the Top” program and some of the legislation designed to improve California’s chances of qualifying for those funds.
“We see the same old patterns—punishment rather than constructive support. Some day before I die,” he sighed, “I hope to see a system [of accountability] that’s not based exclusively on standardized tests.”
That’s why CSBA advocacy will be so important in the coming year, Plotkin continued. The association is implementing new strategies to ensure that school board members are at the table when critical state and federal education policy decisions are made. Most public education groups were “asleep at the switch” during federal deliberations over the No Child Left Behind Act, he noted, warning that the threat of arbitrary measures of student success and punitive “fixes” continues to loom large on the horizon as Congress gears up to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
For example, Plotkin noted, the National School Boards Association was on the verge of endorsing national academic standards last year—a move that could have subjected public schools to more sanctions and interventions based on standardized test scores.
“The California delegation led a revolt on the floor [of NSBA’s Delegate Assembly] to stop this,” Plotkin said.
‘Change the world’
Just after convening the Delegate Assembly, 2008-09 President Paula S. Campbell made sure CSBA’s new “State of Our Schools” campaign got off to a strong start. She called a halt to the proceedings to give the 200-plus delegates in attendance an opportunity to write S.O.S. letters detailing the impacts state budget cuts to education have had in their local schools.
Campbell told delegates that despite the continuing drumbeat of horrible financial news, she also saw much to celebrate as she visited schools in each of CSBA’s 21 regions during her year as president. Campbell said she took office hoping “to change the world. Now,” she added, “I see that we do this every day.”
Delegates also received an update and viewed a new CSBA-produced video on “Rebuilding California from the Ground Up.” Organized by the Cities, Counties and Schools Partnership—a 12-year collaboration between CSBA, the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties—the campaign aims to restore power to the local elected officials who are responsible for providing essential services but who lack the authority to raise revenue and make fundamental policy decisions.
Delegates also heard presentations from and posed questions to two candidates for state superintendent of public instruction: veteran school superintendent Larry Aceves, a former president of the Association of California School Administrators, and state Assembly member Tom Torlakson, D-Martinez. State Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, was also invited but did not attend.
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