John Fensterwald has a great story in the Educated Guess about what the parents in Cupertino are facing for their children. The district is K-8 only, and as the area is pretty wealthy, and fairly progressive, they’ve been able to pass a couple of parcel taxes for the district. In fact, last year they passed one for $4 million. But, that’s not going to be enough:

But now this K-8 Silicon Valley district, home of Apple Computer and some of the  highest performing schools in the state, is facing a $9 million deficit for next year. And that’s putting in jeopardy many of the programs parents consider essential: small classes, summer school, the GATE program for gifted children, librarians.

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To that end, the Cupertino Educational Endowment Foundation is asking parents to help put an initiative on the November ballot that would lower the threshold for passing a parcel tax from two-thirds to 55 percent  to make it easier to pass the next parcel tax.  And organizers are asking every family to donate $375 toward a goal of $3 million  to keep  small classes in grades one to three while saving 105 teachers who’ve been told they’ll otherwise lose their jobs.

Even in a place like Cupertino, where the district has always been able to find a way, there just aren’t the answers that there used to be. Sacramento has cut them out at the knees, and they’re trying to recover the best they can. Will Cupertino still have decent schools come next year? Probably, but if even the so-called “rich districts” are struggling to make ends meet, what does that say for the districts that are dependent upon the state?

If Meg Whitman wants to talk about too much state spending, how about she actually takes a look at our schools? You know, because hers went to private school, she’s not so familiar. And with each cut, with each lost resource, times become harder.

I have a friend who teaches at a public school in San Leandro. It’s a working class area these days, and the economy has hit the community pretty hard.  Students are coming to school completely without supplies, and the districts simply don’t have the money to pay for everything.  But, the teachers aren’t going to let the kids sit there with no pencil, and they end up footing the bill. While the Right wants to talk about how teachers are so spoiled, the fact is that they aren’t exactly making Kingly ransoms. And honestly, I can’t think of a profession that deserves every cent they earn more than teachers.  But, even with that being said, teachers are being forced into spending hundreds of dollars each semester to provide simple school supplies for their classrooms.

This isn’t right.

Luis Medellin and his three little sisters, aged 5, 9 and 12, live in the middle of an orange grove in Lindsay, CA–a small farming town in the Central Valley. During the growing season, Luis and his sisters are awakened several times a week by the sickly smell of nighttime pesticide spraying. What follows is worse: searing headaches, nausea, vomiting.

The Medellin family’s story is not unique. From apple orchards in Washington to potato fields in Florida, drifting poisonous pesticides plague the people who live nearby–posing a particular risk to the young children of the nation’s farm workers, many of whom live in industry housing at the field’s edge.

This situation also often exists in schools in agricultural areas where it’s not uncommon to have a school next to a field.

Nov. 7, 2009 – Salinas Californian:

Salinas Valley schools perched near pesticide-sprayed farmland,

“When schools use pesticides on campus, they post a warning a day before. But when acres of farmland next to classrooms are sprayed with industrial-grade chemicals, often no sign goes up.”

Gonzales resident Aurora Valdez said she’s fearful pesticides sprayed near Gonzales High School, where her kids attend classes, will harm her teenage sons. She said she often prays to the Virgin of Guadalupe to keep her sons from experiencing what she said her husband, Francisco, went through 12 years ago after being exposed to pesticides. “I worry constantly about pesticides,” Valdez said.

That’s why the UFW, Earth Justice, Farm Worker Justice and a coalition of environmental groups petitioned the government to set safety standards protecting children who grow up near farms from the harmful effects of pesticide drift–the toxic spray or vapor that travels from treated fields. We’re also asking officials to immediately adopt no-spray buffer zones around homes, schools, parks and daycare centers for the most dangerous and drift-prone pesticides.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has taken the first step in addressing this problem–opening up the petition for public comment. It’s a promising sign.

Environmental News Service:

EPA Proposes Labeling to Control Pesticide Drift, Evaluates Petition

November 4, 2009 (ENS) – Pesticide labeling to reduce off-target spray and dust drift was proposed today by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The new instructions are aimed at improving the clarity and consistency of pesticide labels and help prevent harm from spray drift, the toxic spray or vapor that travels from treated agricultural fields and into neighboring communities.

The agency is also requesting comment on a citizens’ petition to evaluate children’s exposure to pesticide drift. …

The agency’s leadership needs to hear that you think they’re on the right track. Because they’ll surely be getting an earful from the pesticide industry telling them to keep the status quo. In fact, industry interests like Monsanto and CropLife have already started weighing in.

If we want EPA to do the right thing and put immediate pesticide buffers in place around homes, schools, daycare centers and playgrounds, we need to push back. Please help.

In the past, the EPA has not made this issue a priority–ignoring a law Congress passed that requires the agency to protect children from all exposures to pesticide, including pesticide drift. The agency is already three years overdue in setting safety standards that protect children from drift. But there is new hope with the Obama administration. Will you please send your e-mail today and add your voice to those calling for a change?

Thank you!    

As you’ve probably noticed by my posts this year, I’m not a fan of Arne Duncan. Obama’s Education Secretary has not only continued most of Bush’s education agenda, but he has upped the ante by using $4 billion in “Race to the Top” funds to force states to adopt unproven and right-wing methods of teacher assessment. Earlier this year California legislators dutifully pushed through part of Duncan’s shock doctrine reforms that would never have been approved under different conditions; the Assembly is currently debating other ways to bring CA into compliance with the funding requirements.

What’s most insane about this whole exercise is that California isn’t guaranteed any Race to the Top money at all – instead we have to compete for it:

States will be judged on a 500-point scale that will measure their plans to enact a variety of reforms, including implementing data systems, turning around low-performing schools and paying effective teachers and administrators more.

States now have 60 days to apply for federal funding, which puts more pressure on California Assembly members, who are currently in a special legislative session focused on education. The deadline to apply for the first round of federal dollars is in mid-January….

Education Department officials also issued an estimate, based on school-age population, of how much each state would receive if it were awarded a grant. Four large states, including California, could get $350 million to $700 million.

State officials had hoped California would be eligible for up to $1 billion.

So, just to be clear, Duncan is using the Race to the Top funds as bait to force all 50 states to adopt his crazy reforms designed to even further emphasize testing, link teacher pay and performance to those tests (regardless of the other qualifications and achievements of those teachers) – all without any guarantee that states will get a dime for their trouble.

California ought to call BS on Duncan’s Race to the Bottom. We should drop out of the contest for these funds, as they come at too high a cost – undermining our schools’ ability to properly teach our children for a shot at a small amount of one-time funds. It’s like taking the mortgage payment and buying lotto tickets with it.

Our schools are in serious trouble, thanks to $10 billion in unacceptable cuts made during the 2009 budget deals. Duncan’s bait money won’t make much of a dent in rehiring teachers or improving educational equality. Since the Obama Administration has gone AWOL on the education crisis, California is going to have to seize on public support for schools funding and resolve this problem on our own. We certainly should go no further in implementing Duncan’s reforms.

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California.

Here at Calitics there is an interesting diary from ‘zeroh8’ asking “Why Are We Spending So Much More?”  zeroh8 looked at the changes over the last ten years in how the state spends money.  The result, according to the diary, is a per-capita increase of $1088 as follows:

California Government Department
2007-08 less 1997-98 Per Capita Spending

Criminal Justice $185
General Government $14
Health $265
Higher

Education $109
K-12 Education $399
Resources & Environmental

Protection $27
Social Services $59
Transportation $30
Total $1,088 

Robert Cruikshank commented that the appearance of an education spending increase is an illusion, (sadly California still ranks 47th in education spending-per-pupil)

Much of the “increase” in K-12 funds is illusory. When Arnold cut the VLF in 2003 that money had to be backfilled by the state. That backfilling is listed on  the books as “spending” and so it appears as a huge “spending increase” when in  fact it is no such thing. Schools didn’t actually get more money. It’s an  accounting trick.

Robert is pointing out that this appearance of a large increase in education spending is actually just replacing spending that was already there, but that was cut from local budgets when Governor Schwarzenegger cut the Vehicle License Fee, so the state had to make up (backfill) the loss.  The state is spending more because local governments are spending less, but the total hasn’t increased.  Lesson: you have to look at the whole picture including local budgets to see the whole story because the state has to step in when local governments lose their funding sources.

Health care spending increases are certainly not isolated to California state government.  This is the health care crisis that is eating up government, business and family budgets around the country.  So far We, the People, in our wisdom, had avoided the kind of “socialized medicine” that the rest of the world has, which means we spend vastly more for health care with vastly worse results.  There is little California can do about it, except to further deny health care to people.  Is that the kind of people we will decide to be? 

Then there is that huge increase in criminal justice (prison) spending.  Was that necessary?  Well, we decided to pass laws that put people in prison for life for stealing a pizza or for years for smoking a joint.  And in the last few decades we have cut education spending, which to some extent has necessitated the increases in prison spending, because we know where that inevitably leads,

“18-to-24-year-old male high school dropouts have an incarceration rate 31 times that of males who graduated from a four-year college”      

We’re seeing the health care crisis eating the state budget, and the problem of the prison costs. Part of our problems today are because yesterday we were “penny wise and pound foolish,” saving some money by cutting education only to spend it on prisons (and who knows how many other ways) later.  Along with foolish tax cuts like cutting the VLF, and cutting property taxes for big corporations, and instead borrowing which has led to huge interest payments, those are the spending problems that brought about the budget crisis and that keep our government from being able to spend more on things We, the People need.

About those choices: zeroh8 did a ton of research because no California citizen would know any of this from sources available to most of us.  The corporate media is not explaining the state budget and the functions of government to the public.  The example of the state making up local revenue losses in order to save our schools is a great example — instead it is just presented to people that the state is “spending even more”.

So what is the point of this exercise? To give the people the facts, not the phony sound-bites designed to further anger people against government and rail even further about having to pay taxes to fund the programs and services. The goal of the conservatives is to simply unfund government, thus making “We the People” powerless against the big moneyed interests — the people who brought you the sub-prime fiasco, the Wall Street boondogles, the Haliburton no-bid contracts and the Blackwater mercenaries.  As long as the bucks are flowing, what do they care if government can’t do its job…. what do they care about long lines at the DMV, wildfires that burn down communities, gangs that take over our streets and oh, yes……swine flu epidemics that kill millions?  They can just fly away in their private jets or sail away on their yachts — that California won’t tax.

Click through to Speak Out California and leave a comment.

My sister got her layoff notice yesterday. After teaching 5th grade for three years in an Orange County school district, and having achieved “permanent” status, she was told her services will no longer be needed as of the end of the school year. By all accounts her students’ parents loved her, and as she told me last night, “I don’t know what else I would do, teaching is all I’ve ever wanted to do.” And that’s true, ever since she taught our cousin what a fork was. Teaching is the family business, and now, she’s been told her dreams are no longer possible because California has stopped caring about schools.

She is not alone in watching her hopes and dreams vanish. Over 20,000 of her fellow teachers have been pink slipped, with LA Unified alone firing 9,000 teachers. Uncounted numbers of support staff – the people who answer the phones, who drive the buses, who enable teachers to focus on their jobs, are getting laid off as well. Nobody in Sacramento or the offices of the Zombie Death Cult have been able to explain how this is going to help our state survive economic crisis.

The mass layoffs are an act so vile and insane that it almost defies description. Teachers should be the last people in society laid off, before almost everyone else but the technicians at the water treatment plant. To engage in a mass firing of teachers in the midst of a Depression is like a man stranded in the desert poking out his eyes with a stick because the sun is too bright. Sure, it might help temporarily, but eventually you’re going to want to see where you’re going, and wish you’d never acted so rashly back there on the dune.

Here at Calitics we have repeatedly explained why these layoffs are happening – a conservative veto (the 2/3rds rule) enables Republicans to starve government of revenue and then force crippling cuts while Democrats fail to craft a coherent response. Our knowledge of those underlying causes should not blind us to the insanity of these layoffs.

These pink slips also make a mockery of President Obama’s education plans, which revolve around trying to attract new teachers to the profession:

And so today, I am calling on a new generation of Americans to step forward and serve our country in our classrooms. If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation; if you want to make the most of your talents and dedication; if you want to make your mark with a legacy that will endure – join the teaching profession. America needs you.

Such words ring hollow here in California, where those who already have stepped forward to make the most of their talents and to make a difference in the life of our nation have discovered that the legacy that will endure is a pink slip telling them “sorry, we don’t really want you after all.”

As Chris Bowers pointed out yesterday Obama’s education plans have an overemphasis on dealing with “bad teachers”:

I don’t entirely understand why talk of making teachers work harder, making their profesion more competitive, and making their job secure is so common in America.  We don’t talk about making the lives of other people who work in public service, such as soldiers and first responders–or even health care workers–in such a foreboding way.  If, as a nation, we actually want to solve our teacher shortage, part of that is going to mean dropping our constant national threats to make teachers lives more difficult.  That is just a really, really bad way to recruit and retain teachers.

Obama’s efforts to attract and retain the good teachers is simply impossible and unrealistic when those teachers who, like my sister and her 20,000 colleagues, have been given glowing reviews from administrators and parents alike and yet still find themselves turned away from the career they love.

His plans also suggest he is too wound up in what education writer Stanley Fish called the neoliberalization of education – the belief that education reform involves introducing market forces into schools, even though market forces prioritize money and denigrate other values such as good teaching, care for students, and building communities.

If Barack Obama wants to be serious about education reform, he needs to realize that you must first stop the bleeding before you can do anything else. The US Senate’s decision to gut the state stabilization funds is behind the mass layoffs here in California. That act will neutralized the effect of the stimulus in California and cause lasting damage to a generation of young people whose education has been sacrificed to appease Republicans in Sacramento and the US Senate.

Before Obama focuses on how to fire bad teachers, he needs to first ensure that we retain the good ones. If teaching becomes seen as a profession where quality work brings no job security, then reforms are doomed from the outset.

As Capitol Alert reports, the California Teachers Association has approved an effort to put a 1% sales tax increase on a 2009 special election ballot. The full text of the measure can be found here 9PDF link). The article claims the tax is expected to raise between $5 and $6 billion annually. According to an earlier report on the proposed tax:

89 percent would go to K-12 schools, and the rest to community colleges.

The measure would restrict use of the revenue to specific purposes that include class size reduction, funding art, music and vocation education courses, and salaries for teachers and other school employees.

The money couldn’t be used for administrative costs, and legislators and the governor couldn’t touch the revenue. The money would be allocated to school districts based on their average daily student attendance.

CTA’s decision to move ahead with the plan is likely a recognition that the current budget mess is not going to be resolved without catastrophic cuts to schools. But is this the right move?

Sales taxes are often described as “regressive” taxes since they hit the poor harder than the rich. Over the last few decades California has relied more and more on the sales tax to fund services. As a result the lowest 20% pay more taxes than the highest 20% of income earners in California.

And yet sales taxes are more progressive than the alternative, which are cuts to schools that will hurt working Californians far more than a sales tax. Teachers help support working families and the small businesses that depend on their spending. For centuries – literally – education has been understood to be a key route toward economic security and prosperity for working people. Without access to a quality education, that route is closed. Given that situation a sales tax is more affordable and valuable to the lower 20% than cuts.

When assessing taxes and spending this simple equation needs to be kept in mind:

Income and property taxes > sales taxes > service cuts

That raises the question of why CTA proposes a new sales tax, instead of raising income taxes on the upper incomes and restore progressivity to California taxation. This could be as simple as restoring the tax brackets of 1992-98 that helped fuel broad economic growth.

It’s unclear why CTA chose not to go this route. The personal income tax is a volatile tax, but so is the sales tax, especially in an era when Americans are spending less and saving more.

Still, even a sales tax is better than education cuts and mass layoffs of teachers. As someone who hopes to start a family of his own in the coming years, I’d like to know that I can send my kids to a decent public school like I enjoyed as recently as the mid-1990s.

I’ll vote for this if it makes it to the ballot – and I suspect Californians will too. As we saw in November 2008, Californians are actually quite willing to tax themselves to fund specific projects, notably including mass transit. If thousands of teachers receive layoff notices and schools are slated for closure this spring, it seems highly likely to me that the CTA proposal will pass.

Some may criticize ballot box budgeting – but it is a byproduct, often necessary, of a legislative process that has been hopelessly broken by the 2/3 rule.

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California

California Republicans finally, finally submitted what they claim is a plan to attack the budget deficits, detailing specifics of the cuts they are demanding.  The plan they submitted only cuts the deficit in half, thereby admitting (but not admitting) the urgent need to raise taxes to cover the other half of the deficit.

The Republican plan guts public schools, community colleges, Medi-Cal, transit, mental health and many other programs.  And yet it still leaves half of the deficit in place.  So it isn’t really a “plan” at all.  It is just one more extremist demand that we gut public schools.

A phrase like “guts schools and programs” becomes abstract when it is heard often enough.  So what does this mean to the average Californian?  What kind of education will children receive as we push to 40 or more students per classroom?  Will they be safe if the district cannot afford crossing guards or buses?  Will any of us be safe after police and firefighters are cut back?  Do we go another decade without improving mass transit or even repairing roads and bridges?  Will epidemics spread as health care is cut back?  What about three-hour lines at the DMV?  And what happens to people’s ability to train for jobs when community colleges are cut way back?  

The Republicans demand that we sacrifice the education of an entire generation of school-aged Californians, so that a few wealthy people and corporations can become even wealthier!  Their benefactors are covered — with their kids are in $20,000-a-year private academies.  But what will this do to the economic future of the rest of this generation, and to the future of California?  They don’t care.

This process as it has unfolded over so many years has shown us that California is ungovernable until we remove the current 2/3-requirement system that allows a small group of extremists to hold the state hostage.

Click through to Speak Out California.