Real Money, Real Students
by Jim Groth, Chula Vista Educators/CTA/NEA

"A billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money." - Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen.

In California we are 14.5 billion dollars-short. And that is the story of California's state budget. Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed a 10% cut for public education. These cuts in real money would affect the lives of real students.

Cutting 10% or $4,800,000,000 from public education would be like

• Laying off more than 107,000 teachers.... or
  
• Shutting down every school across the state for nearly a month....or
  
• Increasing class size by 35%.... or
  
• Reducing per-student spending by more than $800.... or
  
• Laying off 137,000 Education Support Professionals.... or
  
• Cutting more than $24,000 per classroom.

All of these proposed cuts were announced one day after Education Week gave California a D+ grade on school funding. According to Education Week, California is 46th in the nation in per-pupil spending and trails the national average by nearly $1,900. (New York spends 75% more than California on public schools.)

The Governor is proposing $400 million in cuts in the current year (2007-08). The reductions could have been as high as $1.4 billion. The cuts are due to an unexpected decline in revenues in the General Fund. State lawmakers will have the final say. They must take action on midyear cuts by March 15, 2008.

For the budget year 2008-09, the Governor's proposed budget would reduce the Proposition 98 guarantee of General Fund money of $43.6 billion to $39.6 billion. This equates to a 9.2% reduction. This would include the elimination of the projected 4.94% COLA for 2008-09.

The budget cuts would also hit higher education. Community colleges would be hit with reductions in general apportionments and growth apportionments. The proposal also includes a 10% cut to CSU and UC systems in addition to student fee hikes.

So what is CTA doing? CTA responded immediately through the press including radio, television and print media. CTA is communicating to members and the public through an advertising and public relations plan. Radio ads began in late January informing the public as to this budget crisis. CTA is meeting with the Education Coalition, a broad coalition of parents and education groups from across California. CTA leaders are meeting with legislators asking them to make education a top priority. As your representative, I am meeting with San Diego and Imperial County educational leaders to discuss the education budget.

What can you do? Log in to www.cta.org to email the Governor and your state legislator.  Follow the CTA website along with www.sdea.net for the latest budget information. Talk to parents, family and friends. Tell them how this budget crisis will impact your students and school.

Last month I talked about two thousand ohhh eight. Welcome to February! I can't wait for March, April, May.......

(Jim can be contacted at Jgroth@cta.org or through the SDEA office.)