School Beat: The Revised Budget Gives Less Than You Think

Lisa Schiff has penned another outstanding School Beat column. This one explores the latest budget proposal from the Schwarzenegger administration -- The Revised Budget Gives Less Than You Think:

Once again the Governor is playing the public education community like his favorite set of puppets. Using the end-of-year revenue upsurge to enable a reprise of his role as an education hero, Schwarzenegger has returned (sort of) a piece of what he took from public school coffers and will portion out the rest over the next seven years. And this is not only supposed to make us happy but make us re-elect him too. Hopefully voters in California will be able to see through this obvious sham.

Her main point is that too much of the new money is one-time money that comes with too many strings attached. This was one of the main themes we heard at the recent community budget workshop. As Jill Wynns pointed out, we may get millions of dollars more next year than last, yet still have to cut WSF budgets. So much of the new money is tied up in restricted funds that it simply cannot be allocated to many of the pressing needs in the district. As Lisa notes in her conclusion:

Along those lines, the PPIC study reports that while California residents want schools to have more money, they also believe that schools could do better with the money we have. Maybe if we were actually allowed to make decisions about how to use that money that statement would be true. Cutting some of the strings and trusting local school districts to make the right decisions about their students would go a long way towards eliminating administrative costs and allowing districts to bend, not break during these lean times. This may be the best we can hope for right now, as changing the structure of funding, as opposed the structure of taxes, is a lot less scary for elected officials.