Remember when voting for the state lottery was going to fix the
education budget forever?
Yeah, right.
The farther away tax money gets from its source, the less efficient
Remember when voting for the state lottery was going to fix the education budget forever?
Yeah, right.
Our school financing system is an absolute, colossal mess and the mess follows an age-old political axiom: the farther away tax money gets from it’s source, the less accountability there is.
In California, the tax money goes to the state which “gives” it back to local school districts. Inserting the state as middleman ensures that planning, common sense and local control get thrown down the garbage disposal.
It’s an abominable system that perpetuates itself on the legend of Proposition 13 passed by voters in 1978 because of legitimate concerns about ever-escalating property taxes.
The state changes from a system of local control to central power
The problem now, however, is that the pendulum has swung too far and we’re left with an untenable financing structure.
This quote from James Guthrie, an education finance analyst, summarizes the situation: “The detrimental consequence of Proposition 13 isn’t so much money, as how it changed the governance structure of California’s education system. Proposition 13 centralized decision making. It changed California from a local system of local schools, to a state system.”
And that’s how our state went from first to worst, from being the envy of the entire nation to becoming the goat. California now ranks 46th in the nation in the amount spent per pupil.
And that ladies and gentleman is how it comes to pass that the Gilroy Unified School District trustees and Superintendent Deborah Flores are forced to come up with $4 million in cuts based on “best guesses” about how much funding they’ll receive from the state.
California now ranks 46th in the nation on per pupil spending
Given the circumstances, trustees have done an admirable job, cutting almost $1 million from the district office and making a sound decision on cutting a period from the middle school day.
We reiterate our call for the district to analyze whether contracting for maintenance and landscaping would save money and we still believe that a temporary wage freeze in concert with teachers would save some jobs.
Nevertheless, while we’re all rightly moaning the local impacts – reduced electives, increased class sizes, fewer teachers, custodians and aides – only acting together to lobby our state representatives to fix the mess they’ve made of public education financing will make a difference. Now would be a good time to speak up.
