The scandal that isn’t
While the sordid sex lives and campaign bumblings of politicians garner all the headlines, something genuinely scandalous is taking place: the governor of California is planning to cut resources for an already anemically funded education system. Students are the victims.
I have the privilege of working with public elementary schools throughout Los Angeles County, from Pacoima to Venice, from San Pedro to La Puente. I call it a privilege because unlike many people I encounter, I have a pretty clear picture of what this city really looks like. Because L.A. is so sprawling, people tend to stick to the familiarity of their bubbles. Apparently the Governator, former L.A. resident, is guilty of the same. If he thinks that the education system can suffer through his proposed funding slash, he doesn’t have a clue what these schools are up against.
The Wonder of Reading, the nonprofit organization I work for, came into existence because public elementary schools do not have adequate library facilities, nor do they have funding for library materials and valuable literacy programs. The Wonder of Reading operates on a shared funding model, working closely with elementary schools to vastly improve upon and increase the size of their libraries. It is a highly successful program that brings entire communities together around the importance of reading, resulting in welcoming library spaces that whole communities can enjoy.
Much of the funding schools acquire for their contribution to the program comes from community donors, money raised by the PTA or booster club, and special funding schools are able to set aside to support their efforts in educating the state’s future leaders. Looming budget cuts, however, are putting schools in panic mode as they project teacher lay-offs, even larger class sizes, and no money for such luxuries as books, much less for improvements to their dilapidated facilities. Is it really any wonder that only 43 percent of California students are reading at grade level?
I find it impossible to see the value of further depleting resources to our education system. To what better use are we going to put the money for our schools? Though this state comprises one of the largest economies in the world, it was ranked 34th out of 50 states in per-pupil spending in 2005-2006. “Just 65 percent of California’s high school students graduate on time with a regular diploma. California ranks 38th in the nation on this measure,” according to the Children Now: 2008 California Report Card. If we want California to thrive in the future, we must provide the resources now that future generations will draw on to succeed. Education matters most. The math is simple.
While the public supports wealthy political candidates, who are raising tens of millions of dollars to fund their smear campaigns, on the one hand, and the nation is distracted by the expensive philandering of the now-former New York governor, on the other, real issues remain unaddressed, fly under the radar, never register as priorities. Schwarzenegger is about to commit a much graver atrocity than merely paying for sex. His budget cuts will have a profound impact on the future of the entire country.
How can you take action? Express your opposition by contacting your local representatives and prove that the public is truly ready to participate in this democracy. If change is what you want, you have to make it happen.
You wrote that California “ranked 34th out of 50 states in per-pupil spending in 2005-2006.” This might be true, but per-pupil spending should be scaled to the cost of living for a particular region. The top states in spending are in the Northeast, which also has the highest cost of living. Also, per-pupil spending doesn’t necessarily correlate to good schools. I think D.C is ranked third or fourth in per-pupil spending (at almost $13,000 per student) and I doubt any parent would send their kid there if they had another choice. On the other hand, Iowa and Florida, which have some very good public schools, spent $7,972, and $7,207, respectively. To put things in perspective, California spent $8,067 per student, with the national average being $8,701.
While I agree with you that education should be a top priority, looking at the California budget it’s hard to argue that it’s not already the top priority since the biggest chunk of the budget (about 40%) goes towards education. Yeah, it sure would be nice to pump more money into the schools, but from where is it going to come? Bonds that pass on the debt to our kids? Cuts to other parts of the budget? (If so, that would probably have to be from health and human services since that’s the next biggest chunk at 25% of the budget. Cuts from other parts will get you very little.) Raising taxes? (In a recession!) Yeah, that’s what most supporters of better schools would say, raise taxes – as long as it’s somebody else’s taxes like “the rich.” Now that takes courage!
Contacting your local representative to let her know how you feel is all well and good, but if you are really in earnest about making a change for the better why not put your money where your mouth is? Tax time is coming up and everybody who wants better schools and government services should check that little box to pay extra money beyond what you actually owe. Any takers?
Oh c’mon, CV. If your numbers are right, they’re a scandal. California pays a hundred bucks more per student than Iowa? And the tax revenues are…. what exactly? One block in 90210 is worth more than the entire state of Iowa. How about this: If you send your kid to a private school, you pay one-quarter the yearly tuition directly to the city public school system. Or how about: If you make less than fifty grand per year household income, all your tax money goes directly to your local school. None of your tax money goes to corporate bail outs, the war in Iraq, homeland security or congressional healthcare. That would increase the whopping 40 percent of the California state budget to maybe 41 percent, which is better than nothing. How about this: If your local school has more than four alumni who have served in Iraq, all the tax money from that district goes directly to the school. How about: If your local school has more than four alumni who have served at least two tours of duty in Iraq, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush and Rice each must donate or raise $100,000 for your local schools for as many consecutive years as the war has been waged. There are solutions, CV. You just have to be angry and think creatively.
Beverly Hills is hardly representative of the state! (For some stats you can look here: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html)
The Per capita money income, 1999 for California was $22,711. For Iowa it was $19,674. This is not the huge difference that most people might think. The percent of per capita money income spent for public education per-pupil in California is thus about 36%. For Iowa it’s about 41%. Clearly Iowa is spending a larger percent of its money on education (since it’s fortunate enough not to need to spend as much on prisons, transportation, and housing) but I wouldn’t call it a scandal! For California about 12% of the per capita money goes to the state government, whereas for Iowa it’s only about 9%. Clearly, the problem is not that Californians are paying too little in state taxes.
Since you proposed some alternatives to my suggestion, let’s have a look – at least at those that don’t seem to be complete sarcastic jokes:
You wrote, “If you send your kid to a private school, you pay one-quarter the yearly tuition directly to the city public school system.” Where’s the logic in that? If you enacted this law and a sizeable number of thos people moved their kids from private to public schools this would burden the public schools even further. Those people are already paying twice for education. Why would you want to tempt them to stop?
You wrote, “If you make less than fifty grand per year household income, all your tax money goes directly to your local school.” And your tax money that went to social services, housing, etc.. would then disappear leaving these agencies in deep trouble. Sounds like a wonderful plan. Or was it your idea to have somebody else (it’s always somebody else) pay more to pick up the slack?
You wrote, “None of your tax money goes to corporate bail outs, the war in Iraq, homeland security or congressional healthcare.” Hey, that’s fine with me. You think you can get the rest of the country to go along with that? Hmm… there is one rub: all those expenditures are on a federal level, while education is a state responsibility. Well, it sounded good anyway.
Thinking creatively is great, although it helps to do it when you’re not angry. The sad fact is that the money has to come from someplace, which means cutting spending on other programs, borrowing money (and going deeper in debt and paying interest on that debt), or raising taxes (which is not even guaranteed to increase revenues in the medium or long run). Yeah, they all suck. But you know if every Democrat in the state would just voluntarily pay an extra few hundred dollars in state taxes for something they say they believe in we’d have more than enough money to fully fund the schools. Problem solved, and it could be solved this year! Aren’t our schools worth it for this small sacrifice – or do you need to do more creative thinking to figure out how to get somebody else to do the paying?
I respect your opinion, but I feel like you’re just playing devil’s advocate, Carlos. The bottom line is that someone who works from within the already skeletal financial framework of the California education system is giving a first-hand report of what an extra FIVE BILLION in budget cuts will do to further undermine the simple cause of giving every child in the public system an adequate chance at succeeding in life. You can throw all of the stats you want out there to skew the situation, but the reality is that it’s about to go from BAD to WORSE in a hurry in a state with an economy that outranks 90% of the U.N. members in gross national product. 20,000 teachers have lost their jobs and more cuts are coming. The remaining ones are being setup to fail and the field is being stripped of any appeal to people teetering between becoming an educator and working in the private sector, where they are guaranteed a paycheck. Say what you want, but the situation is dire. There is no creativity needed here - find a way to fill the budget gap without cutting education funding. End of story. It may be logistically and politically naive to say so, but it would be nice if someone in Sacramento shared that style of black-and-white thinking when it comes to securing the future of our children.
Okay, I’m drawn back in… The problem with California’s schools, I’m guessing, is not what’s happening in Petaluma. We’re talking about the urban school systems. You live in L.A. County, you should pay a lot more for the schools. The thing is to get the teacher-student ratio down, teacher salaries up and make resources available in abundance– including parent participation. Private schools are an opt-out that serves to plague the many for the benefit of the few. If everyone went to the public schools, you can bet they’d be hella improved in about three years. If you’re presently paying $15,000 per year to a private school then, once you’re forced to send your kid to the public school, you’ll happily pay an additional $2,000 in taxes straight into your county school system. If you’re frightened your children will be ruined by discussions of Darwin and condoms, then Los Angeles isn’t for you anyway.
Yes, I’m talking about redistributing tax money. Under 50 grand household income taxes go to local school. Money for social services, police, fire, garbage are drawn out of 90210. That or the hood gets worse and worse and expands and the kid you spend all your money protecting at her private school either gets killed in a riot or generally has to live in a degraded world and all your protecting was as short-sighted as your friends told you it was back in the day.
The federal money that now goes to the war and etc, under the JT plan it would get funneled into the state coffers. No money to George Bush and his fucked up spendthrift plans for global domination and his Justice Department fat cat cronies. Sorry, no. No more money to torture and house un-indicted prisoners indefinitely on Cuba. Sorry, no. Haliburton and Blackwater must return all tax money ever paid to them. Ken Lay’s Enron fortune and those of all the Enron executives, all of their holdings and properties in their entirety will be placed in a trust to pay teacher salaries throughout California, where his company’s denial-of-service market gouging practices killed elderly and sick residents and cost the state revenue from loss of production.
If every Democrat under the CV plan would be compelled out of conscience to spend an extra hundred dollars at tax time to save the schools, why shouldn’t the Republicans just move somewhere else? Why can’t everyone be required to pay fifty bucks more at tax time? Isn’t that a better solution?
My intention was not to play devil’s advocate as much as to1) shed light on the actual numbers for public education in California and 2) point out how vacuous and hypocritical it is to contact your local representative to demand more money for schools while not being willing to actually pay for it. Do you really think the problem is that you’re your representatives doesn’t know that you want better schools? Who doesn’t want better schools?! But that representative probably knows better than you that when it comes down to it, the majority – and probably you — aren’t willing to actually pay for it, or at least don’t trust the government with their money to do it.
Hey, I’m all for giving more money for the public schools. I actually voted to increase my property taxes to increase funding for our local schools, so don’t get me wrong. What bothers me is the complete disconnect that so many people have about where the money comes from. So far I’ve heard only that the money has to come from somewhere, or that it should come from those rich folks in Beverly Hills. There is no serious thought. It certainly would have been great to spend the war money on school instead, but remember that that money is all borrowed anyway. Yeah, we would get better-funded schools, but the kids are saddled with debt either way. We should be proud.
JT, you wrote, “Why shouldn’t the Republicans just move somewhere else?” Well, they did! How many Republicans do you see in the hood? By your logic, the removal of those evil Republicans should have made things much better in Watts and Compton. They’re not using any resources there and yet they’re paying a hell of lot of money in taxes for schools that they’re not even using. The communists already tried the experiment of eliminating the rich. How’s that working for them?
You go on to write, “Why can’t everyone be required to pay fifty bucks more at tax time? Isn’t that a better solution?” Of course it is, but how are you going to get that done and how long is that going to take? If this is the crisis that Chris says it is, shouldn’t we just do the right thing and voluntarily pay more in taxes — fairness be damned?
Politicians know that when it comes voting time they’re going to catch hell if they raised taxes, so they don’t – or they take the cowardly approach and pass a bond measure so that our kids pay for it. The majority in California think they are already taxed too much and since we live in a democracy (er., republic) we have to respect that. Complaining to your representative about something that requires money isn’t going to change anything. But that doesn’t mean you are powerless! Just think if even 20% in CA followed the CV plan. That alone would be a huge contribution to the schools. Representatives would then think, “Hey they are willing to pay more in taxes, so let’s raise them for everybody to be fair.” Still no takers?
Somewhat lost in the shuffle is the other pesky fact that more money doesn’t necessarily mean better schools. New York, New Jersey and D.C., those paragons of public education, spend about 60% more per pupil than in California. Did they get their money’s worth?
Hey wait. I didn’t say I think the Republicans should move out or that we get rid of the rich. I might be angry but don’t go making me out to be a separatist stalinist. The CV plan, as presented, asks bleeding heart Dems alone to give more. That’s ludicrous. Dems should ask everyone to give more. I think the point that got lost was the one Chris made better than I did about allocating funds. As Sasha put it in the original post, it’s about priorities. CV, you act as if the budget is unassailable. But if anything is assailable it is a government budget. Forget bond issues and Dems making voluntary donations at tax time. Cut state homeland security funding in half, build absolutely no more prisons, stop construction on those being built, tax the shit out of oil companies… there are ways. One word: reallocation. Teachers and classrooms and books and computers.
JT wrote, “I didn’t say I think the Republicans should move out or that we get rid of the rich.” Sorry. I didn’t catch your intent on that one. (To be honest, though, I’m not sure I understand your intent upon a second and third reading.)
You wrote, “CV, you act as if the budget is unassailable.” That is not my intent. I certainly think the budget can and should be molded to reflect different priorities. Priorities are, to be sure, very important, although I think you seriously overestimate the amount of money you can get from reallocation and underestimate the consequences. The state budget is online for all to see. Reallocating money from prisons to schools sounds great until you’re forced to let dangerous people back on the street and crime goes up — and you can be sure that this will happen NOT in Beverly Hills but in the poorer areas. Taxing oil companies also sounds nice until gas prices go up and again it’s the working class that is hurt the most. If you want to pump a significant amount of money into schools and not burden future generations, you’ll have to raise taxes. You’re fooling yourself if you think otherwise. Who you tax is another matter. Before you reply you should think long and hard about what it morally means to have somebody else pay for something that is dear to you, and the implications of a having a majority that forces a minority to finance everything.
The point I was trying to make is that the current budget has already been set (indirectly to be sure) by the priorities of the majority, and given that state of reality I’m asking you to ask yourself, “what am I really prepared to do about it?” The majority has already said that they would rather spend their money on a latte every day (or, for those in the hood, on a pimped out car or some extra bling) than on public schools. The money is out there, even in poor areas. Everybody could and should contribute more, but they voted not to. To be sure, it’s their right to do so. Now, you can (and probably should) try to convince a majority to vote for representatives that want to spend more on schools (i.e., raise taxes) and pray that those representatives won’t be bought off by powerful interests, and if all goes well you might see a change in four years. That won’t solve a damn thing for this current crisis. I’m asking in all seriousness if this matter is really of such importance and of such urgency why not do something that is guaranteed to have a positive effect, which is to voluntarily pay more taxes? You say it’s not fair, and I agree, but neither is it fair to override the majority’s will. By refusing to voluntarily pay more taxes on the grounds that it’s not fair you deny schools money out of hurt feelings. Look, if you could magically have taxes raised on everybody you would pay the same amount. What would be the difference to your personal finances? Nothing. The only difference is that you know some other guy didn’t have to pay, and for that you call the whole thing off. I ask that you examine what it really means to have priorities.