Webcast: Panel recaps election’s effect on budget, prospects for kids
Published: November 9, 2010
Ballot measures regarding corporate taxes and the vote threshold on fees will poke a multibillion-dollar hole in the state budget, which will be difficult to balance regardless of the new majority vote requirement, experts from School Services of California and the California School Boards Association said in a complimentary webcast Monday.
The wide-ranging analysis included discussion of Gov.-elect Jerry Brown’s positions on education, the mood of California voters on taxes, major issues expected to surface when Congress takes up reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and a call to school board members to “put a human face” on the sacrifices budget cuts are forcing students to endure.
With the recently enacted state budget already said to be out of balance, the prospect of midyear cuts looms. But schools and other agencies will find it hard to absorb further shortfalls so far into the fiscal year, said the panel, moderated by SSC President Ron Bennett. Rick Pratt, CSBA’s assistant executive director for governmental relations, and Holly Jacobson, the association’s assistant executive director for policy analysis and leadership development, joined in, as well as SSC vice presidents Maureen Evans and Robert Miyashiro.
Because school boards have been so adroit at stretching their shrinking budgets to cover essential educational needs, many legislators have the impression that schools will always be able to handle cuts. Those days are over, Pratt said.
“We need to get across to decision-makers in Sacramento that we’re no longer going to be able to do more with less,” he said. “What we have to start doing is put a human face on what these cuts are doing in terms of student outcomes.”
Jacobson confirmed that the conditions of children are tenuous.
“The needs of kids in their lives right now, given the economy, have never been greater,” she said. “We have more kids who are homeless, more kids in poverty, more families in crisis with parents losing jobs. So the needs of the students—the individual human beings that they are—are much higher than they were before.”
Easy link:
• View the webcast here through Dec. 7.