What began in Alameda last month is now beginning to spread around the state. As their future is taken from them by a Yacht Party determined to protect wealth and aristocracy through crippling education cuts, California students are beginning to fight back. In rallies that are unfolding across the state, they are speaking out for opportunity, for education, for democracy.

And on April 18 and April 21, they are poised to make the loudest statement yet against the destruction of education in California.

More on that below. But first, how is Arnold responding to the crisis in public education? The governor, whose own children attend private schools, made a fundraising visit to St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano yesterday at the request of Mimi Walters, GOP assemblywoman and parent of two St. Margaret’s students. He was met by over 200 protestors who denounced Arnold’s education cuts:

Chanting “Save our schools” and “Shame on you,” about 200 teachers, students and parents from across South County lined the narrow sidewalks in front of a Mexican restaurant Thursday afternoon, protesting Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed education cuts as the governor rolled up for a fundraiser.

Sheriff’s deputies on foot and motorcycle ordered protesters to stay off the private driveway of El Adobe de Capistrano restaurant in the moments leading up to the governor’s 6:15 p.m. arrival. Schwarzenegger entered the downtown San Juan Capistrano eatery through a side entrance and did not address the protesters.

Schwarzenegger’s communications director, Matt David, told reporters the governor “wishes he could be outside with these protesters” and that he applauded their efforts.

“This is the last thing he wants to do,” said David, explaining that the governor hoped to work with lawmakers to find a different solution to the state’s budget crisis. “He understands how important it is to fund education.”

Of course, nobody forced Arnold to propose a $4 billion cut to K-12 funding. And he can reverse those cuts in his May revise. But he will get his chance to join these protestors over the next week, as California students are about to unleash an unprecedented wave of activism to stop Arnold and his attacks on public education.

The tone was set earlier this week at Mission Viejo High School, where 4,000 people rallied to oppose the education cuts:

Tuesday’s rally – one in a series of protests that have been staged on street corners and at Orange County schools in recent weeks – was primarily intended to give students an opportunity voice their views on the budget crisis in front of a microphone. The one-hour event was spearheaded by the Saddleback Valley Inter-Council of Students, a group of 21 student leaders from the district’s five high schools.

“Budget cuts should not punish students and the future of this state,” Kaitlyn Spore, student representative to the district Board of Education and a Mission Viejo High senior, told the crowd. “It is our hope that we can send a strong message to the governor that education must be a priority.”

These protests are about to get much larger. Two coalitions are organizing statewide protest actions next week – K-12 students will rally in Sacramento and across the state on April 18, and college students will do the same on April 21.

The April 18 Day of Action is being called Right to Learn and is organized by Youth Noise, a group that has been working to organize young Californians around a variety of issues. Trey Csar, the coordinator of the Right to Learn Day of Action, told me that their goal is to empower students to become activists, not just on April 18 but over the long-term period. The rallies are designed to mobilize students and build coalitions that can survive over the coming months, especially the summer break.

Right to Learn is modeling itself on the successful Step It Up climate action movement. Crowdsourcing is the driving principle, where students at high schools across the state will initiate activism, plan their own actions, and use the internet to share their experiences with other students across the state.

Alongside the April 18 movement, Students for California is organizing several mass rallies around the state on April 21, centered on a protest march in Sacramento from Raley Field to the State Capitol. There will also be marches in Santa Barbara, LA, Riverside, San Diego, and even Arcata. Josh Franco, who is coordinating the April 21 events, told me that his model is the immigrant rights protests from spring 2006 – a large display of student power, it is hoped, will spark political awareness among other students and show state legislators the depth of public anger at the proposed cuts.

If the Republicans are going to be broken, and if a 2/3 vote for a sane and responsible budget that doesn’t cut education is going to be attained, it will take public activism of this sort. California’s students are not going to take the destruction of their future quietly. Let’s hope their activism next week is a success, and that it is but the beginning of a statewide, mass movement to reverse these cuts.

( – promoted by Robert in Monterey)

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across a brilliant metaphor for how the debate over problems often totally misses the root of a given problem itself: “How Best to Fill a Sieve With Water”:

There are many arguments over which is the correct course of action which I liken to debating how best to fill a sieve with water. By this I mean that they ignore the fact that their premise is wrong.

Obviously the first thing an impartial observer would say when the two camps are debating whether to use a spoon or a cup would be to point out that one can’t fill a sieve without first plugging the holes. This seems to be my current role, pointing out assumptions which are either wrong or taken as being obvious without any examination.

Here are a few current (and not so current) examples.

The best way to stimulate the domestic economy is by raising/lowering taxes. Perhaps the best thing is not to stimulate the economy at all but to redistribute the present wealth better or to shrink the economy to a sustainable level. “Growth is good” is the sieve.

The best way to aid the development in the third world is by foreign investment/local projects. That the goal should be “development” goes without saying. What development means is the sieve.

[…]

The way to control foreign powers is by the use of military might/diplomacy. That other states need to be “controlled” is the sieve. Perhaps they just need to be left alone.

The writer, rdf, offers a bunch of other examples, but the principle is clear enough.

Then, I came across this post at Davis Vanguard that brings out one such example of debating the filling of sieves with water, in the context of intra-educational battles over California’s Proposition 92, which would set minimum levels of Community College funding and limit tuition to $15 per unit, paying for it out of prop. 98 funds.

There is no doubt in my mind that community colleges are one of the most laudable aspects of the American educational system, if not the most laudable. The second chance (and third chance, etc) that they offer to students who may not have been ready for college at 18, or people for whom life’s hard realities intervened, or who don’t have the cash to go to a state college, or who are just interested in a skill or a given subject serves to make the American educational system far more democratic in terms of openness and serving the whole population than the far more tracked systems of Asia or Europe (even as our structural flaws and barriers to true equality of access to education place our systems at a distinctly inferior position when looked at from the vantage point of the systemic or societal level). Community colleges are, in a broader educational context that leaves a lot to be ashamed of, a justifiable point of pride. And they only serve that critical educational function when the cost of attending is nominal if not entirely free. So at a gut level, while I’m unsure if prop. 92 is the best means to get to that end, generally I’m quite sympathetic to what they’re trying to do with it.

But it is a mistake to get sucked into fighting over scraps of the pie, when we should be asking why the pie is insufficient for public education at all levels in this state. The CCs work synergistically with the UCs, CSU and the primary educational system. If they’re all hurting for funding, let’s look at where waste can be rededicated toward more productive ends (namely, by moving funds from the embarassingly overpaid administrative area to the long-neglected salaries of staff and faculty or physical plant area). It would probably cut costs significantly were we to have decent public health insurance, to contain that exponentially rising cost of forking over a grotesque profit margin to the insatiable insurance and pharmaceutical corporations. But after you cut the obvious waste, we really need to get serious and start acting like adults about raising taxes to pay for this public good. Jacking up fees is a terrible (and illegal, if you look at the 1960 California Master Plan For Higher Education‘s requirement that fees never go to pay for educational costs, long since breached in bipartisan practice from Gov. Reagan on down to another B movie actor-turned-Governor) way to make up the shortfall, because it strikes at the very heart of an open public educational system by rationing the common good of education by ability to pay (or at least by willingness to accrue sizeable student debt).

Tuition in Calfornia has risen at a rate far exceeding inflation or state costs since 2003, while state spending on higher education has been falling as a % of the state budget for decades now. This is not by accident, this is the result of a deliberate plan to gradually privatise the whole educational system by Governor Schwarzeneggar’s finance director, Donna Arduin. From an LA times article two months ago:

To reorganize the state’s finances, Schwarzenegger recruited Donna Arduin, an advocate of privatizing government services who had been Florida budget director under Gov. Jeb Bush. As California finance director, she soon became known as Schwarzenegger’s “bad cop.”

Her budget plan for UC and CSU called for hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts for the third consecutive year, major student fee hikes, a reduction in enrollment and a plan to steer thousands of students to community colleges instead of the universities.

These “crises” are not accidental or temporary, they’re structural, and are instrumentally used to set different parts of the educational community against each other to distract from the privatization and slow destruction of what was once a world class public institution with free tuition and low fees, open to anyone with the grades. With every tuition and fee hike, and every shift to corporate or private donations (with strings attached, it should go without saying), the very idea of the public is watered down and eroded, and we all get suckered into just accepting it as a natural state or random “crisis” instead of as a system under deliberate atack on ideological grounds.

The solution here is not to fight over the scraps from the table, but rather to demand that funding matches the needs of a world class, accessible educational system. you cannot have quality on the cheap, and there is a vast public interest in having the social mobility and economic dynamism that comes from such an educational system, from the CCs on up.

When you look at what benefit has accrued and continues to accrue to the state of California from the existence of our public higher educational system, it is well worth the money. As these fees continue to be raised, that once great engine of social mobility will slow down and eventually grind to a stop, and those social benefits will not accrue in the same way. Cutting a segment of the population out makes it harder to justify paying for the system collectively. Turning away California’s poor, California’s working class and increasingly its middle class as well as starves our economy and our culture from the dynamism and works that those students might have created with the stimulus of a world class education.

If one believes in an educational meritocracy, education ought to be completely free, to let the cream rise to the top. What privatizers like Schwarzeneggar and Arduin mistakenly assume is that those with the money are the cream by virtue of their having all that money in the first place. The history of America and the history of California suggest otherwise.

I’m going to have to read up on prop 92 to decide whether it’s worth pursuing, but in the big picture, it’s a symptom of a greater problem that we’re not addressing as a state.

(This grew out of a comment on the Davis Vanguard thread, that got so long I figured it needed its own diary. Originally at surf putah)

( – promoted by Robert in Monterey)

Pay for disgraced overpaid executives goes up:

University of California President Robert Dynes, who was pressured earlier this year to step down by next June, is expected to get an over-scale faculty salary of $245,000 for research and teaching at UC San Diego.

[…]

Dynes had been at the center of controversy after The Chronicle disclosed that millions of dollars in extra compensation and questionable perks had been handed to some top executives without telling the public or regents. The Chronicle’s findings, reported in 2005 and 2006, were followed by three state and university audits that showed how UC administrators sometimes flouted, circumvented and violated university policies governing pay and perks.

Speaking to reporters outside the meeting, Dynes said he would be taking a yearlong administrative leave at his presidential salary of $405,000 after he steps down.

“It is a sabbatical that I have earned. I have been at UC for 17 years, toward 18 years, and I have never taken a sabbatical,” Dynes said. “I look forward to it to re-energize myself.”

In leaving the presidency, Dynes will have his moving costs to San Diego reimbursed and he is authorized to get a subsidized, low-interest housing loan from UC.

[…]

In related action, the committee gave thumbs up to a pair of 17 percent raises for Hume and Vice President Anne Broome. The full board is expected to approve them Thursday.Hume needs the $62,500 raise to bring his salary closer to his peers, Regent Judith Hopkinson said. Hume’s salary, which will be $425,000 a year, is more than Dynes’ $405,000 salary. Regents Chair Richard Blum [that’s Mr. Dianne Feinstein, for those keeping score in ruling class bingo.] said that when a new president is hired, the salary for the top position would be increased.

At the same time  the already-high tuition for debt-burdened students goes up:

The California State University Board of Trustees is expected to approve a $4.8 billion budget request today that could increase student fees 10 percent next year, and the University of California’s governing board is expected to follow suit with a possible increase of 7 percent.

[…]

Fees have nearly doubled at both universities since 2002. Most recently, the 23 campuses of the California State University system raised fees by 10 percent to about $3,521 annually this year, and the 10-campus University of California system increased the cost for undergraduates by 9.7 percent to about $7,494. The figures do not include expenses such as room, meals and books.

[…]

Gregory Cendana of the UC Student Association said that he is not seeing an increase in quality or services with his rising fees. He said he has to work 35 hours a week in two jobs and will graduate with $21,000 in debt.

“I’m tired of paying higher fees when I still have to sit on the floor of my classes,” he said.

So let me get this straight. A decent wage and benefits for food service workers? Sorry, don’t have the money, unless we take it out of stuident fees. Cost of living increases for professors, staff or academic student employees? Sorry, can’t afford it, times are tough, tighten your belts. Keeping fee increases within inflation levels (let’s not even begin to talk about the UC mandate to provide free public tuition, long since abrogated in deed if paid lip service)? Sorry, wouldn’t be fiscally prudent, pull yourselves up by your bootstraps between classes, kids.

But huge bonuses and six figure salaries for disgraced administrators? Sure, the UC system needs “good people,” and their peers are making so much more than them, think of the embarassment of having smaller salaries than the other plutocrats.

They aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. The UC and CSU systems are being privatized before our eyes.

originally at surf putah

What would you do if your American dream had to be deferred? And how would you respond when you find out that your dream must be deferred because of nine digits? Yep, nine digits would be separating you from your plans, your hopes, your wishes, your future. Doesn’t that seem unfair?

Well, it is. It’s quite unfair for all the young people to work so hard to go to college, yet can’t access any financial aid because they are undocumented immigrants. And even if they can somehow make it through college, they can’t get a job because they don’t have those nine little digits. Even though they came here as children, and even though they only remember living here, they are punished for something they had no control over.

So what can be done about this injustice? Follow me after the flip for more…

A couple of days ago, I met this guy named Ricardo. He seemed like a nice guy, and like a typical young professional in Orange County who did everything he was supposed to do to succeed. Yet for some reason, he can’t.

Ricardo did everything he was supposed to do in high school. He excelled in his classes, and he went on to college. He now has a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology. He has a master’s in health policy. He wants to serve people in the medical profession. However, he can’t.

So why can’t Ricardo get a job? He doesn’t have those nine digits. His parents brought him here with them some nineteen years ago, and they all came here undocumented. He was only eight years old. He hardly even remembers Mexico. He’s spent the vast majority of his life in the US, and this nation is the nation he calls home.

Ricardo never sought to break the law. He doesn’t gang-bang. He doesn’t deal drugs. He’s not some “criminal alien”. He’s just a smart guy who did everything right and went to school and planned to do something good with his life. So why must he be “punished” for something that he had no control over.

Unfortunately, Ricardo had no opportunity to receive any financial aid. He started school before AB 540 became the law of the land in California in 2003. And since he didn’t have those nine digits, he had to struggle just to afford his college tuition.

But even now that he’s finished school, Ricardo still has to struggle. He can’t get a job. He still doesn’t have those nine digits. He’s at his wit’s end. Without the nine digits, all his dreams must be put on hold indefinitely.

So what can be done? Ricardo’s just one person who’s been unfairly “punished” because of his immigration status. These young people didn’t make a “choice to come here illegally”. They didn’t just decide to “break the law”. They came here as kids, yet they’re being punished like adult criminals. What can be done to fix this?

Obviously, AB 540 isn’t enough. This only helps immigrant students in California, and it only helps these students go to school. However, it doesn’t help them get jobs after school. That’s why we need the DREAM Act.

So what would the DREAM Act do? Basically, it would give a path to legalization for people who brought to the US undocumented as children by their parents. In order to qualify, they need proof of having arrived in the United States before reaching 16 years of age ,as well as proof of residence in the US for a least five consecutive years since their date of arrival. Oh yes, and they must have graduated from an American High School, or obtained a GED.  Oh, and they must also demonstrate “good moral character,” which is defined as the absence of a significant criminal record (or any drug charges whatsoever).

So what exactly would be done? Here’s a quick rundown from the Wiki entry:

Immigrants who meet the above requirements would be eligible to apply for a temporary six (6) year “conditional” residence permit which would allow them to live legally in the United States, obtain driver’s licenses, attend college as in-state residents, work legally (including obtaining a social security number), and apply for special travel documents which would allow for travel outside of the country for limited amounts of time.

During the six years of conditional status, the eligible immmigrant would be required to either (1) graduate from a two-year community college, (2) complete at least two years towards a 4-year degree, or (3) serve two years in the U.S. military. After the six year period, an immigrant who meets at least one of these three conditions would be eligible to apply for legal permanent resident (green card) status. During their temporary time, immigrants would not be eligible for federal higher education grants such as Pell grants, though they would be able to apply for student loans and work study.

There, now doesn’t that sound fair? Doesn’t this do justice for people like Ricardo who never sought to “break the law”, but just want a chance to do something good with their lives? Don’t they have a right to pursue their dreams? Oh yes, and shouldn’t they finally just have a chance to get those darn nine digits so that they can move on with their lives? Isn’t it only in the best interest of the greater society that they can be productive forces in our society?

So would you like to find out more about the stories of these immigrant students, the story behind the DREAM Act, and why we shouldn’t stereotype immigrants? If you’re in Orange County, you can watch a special play, “9ine Digits Away from My Dream”. You can hear more about Ricardo’s story, as well as stories from other immigrant students in Orange County who are struggling because of an unfair system. And yes, you can gain some more understanding, and find out what you can do to change this.

And no matter where you live, you can urge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) to get the DREAM Act passed in the House. Isn’t it time that we stop deferring these young people’s dreams? Should we allow nine digits to get in the way of these people’s dreams of better lives?

From the Academic Student Employee union (UAW #2865) at UC Davis:

As an important step toward winning our bargaining demands for improved workload protections, UAW 2865 members around the state are having a grade-in/tutor-in during finals week.  Our action will demonstrate to the University of California just how much work it takes to ensure the students at UC Davis get the quality education they deserve. Come out and show your support for increased workload protections while you get your work done.

WHO: All TAs, Graders, Tutors and Grad Students
WHAT: Grade-in/Tutor-In
WHERE: Memorial Union Patio
WHEN: Tuesday, June 12, 11:30am – 1pm

As contract negotiations have progressed, the administration has stalled having any serious discussion over workload.  As enrollment has steadily increased statewide, class and section sizes have ballooned, creating more work for Teaching Assistants, Tutors, and Readers. When we are overworked we cannot provide quality education to our students and we are slower to advance in our academic careers.  We are faced with pressure to speed up our work and do more with less. Employees want increased workload protections that would give the union a say over class and section size.

The Union has made several proposals to proactively prevent overworking that have not been addressed by the administration.  In addition to negotiating with UC administration over class and section sizes, TAs Tutors, and Readers also want to win the right to arbitrate over workload.  With the current contract, academic student employees cannot take workload grievances to arbitration, which means any workload disputes are settled by an internal university board rather than a neutral arbitrator.

We need to show the administration that the issue of workload is important to us and remind them how crucial our work is for the quality of education at the University of California.  Bring any exams or papers you need to grade or hold outdoor office hours/tutoring sessions and help send a strong message to the administration that they must address this key issue.

Grading makes finals week a crazy time of year for grad students who tutor or TA undergraduate classes, but most of the time the time that we put into that work is invisible to both the undergraduate students and the univeristy administration. The larger the section and the greater the workload, the harder it gets to do that grading to the best of one’s ability, and everyone on campus ends up losing as a result. As a way of raising the visibility of this critical work, and demonstrating to the administration that we are not just going to be pushovers in the rest of our contract negotiations this summer and into next fall quarter, please show up and get some grading done out on the MU patio. Similar events will be scheduled at the other quarter-based UC campuses, please feel free to post info in the comments.

This looks like a lot of fun, and a creative sort of protest to boot. See you all there!

originally at surf putah

—–

UPDATE The grade-in/tutor-in had a pretty good turnout for a finals week at noon (several TAs were busy proctoring final exams, and couldn’t make it), between 20 and 30 from my count, grading together on tables in the shade. The Enterprise had a reporter and photographer there interviewing some of the workers, and a fair number of curious undergraduates stopped by and wanted to know what was going on. All in all, a good way to get some visibility, and it beat grading in the office!

Here are a couple of pictures of the grade-in:

Sign 1: “Our Working Conditions =Student Learning Conditions”

Sign 2: “Education Without Exploitation”

A Teaching Moment:

ASE Graders At Work: