The details of Arnold's budget plan are in and it is even more insane than we thought. His budget includes large cuts to public schools, which are bad enough in their own right. But the specific kinds of cuts are going to trigger a snowball effect that could destroy public schools in California - and I don't believe that's an exaggeration.
California schools could eliminate a week of instruction and increase class sizes next year under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's new plan for solving the state's budget crisis.
Vowing to give schools maximum flexibility to cut costs, the proposal unveiled Wednesday also would allow districts to eliminate one of two science courses required for high school graduation.
Schwarzenegger's plan would provide no teacher salary increases, eliminate a program providing subsidies to overhaul low-performing schools, and suspend participation in a program encouraging teachers to obtain national certification.
In and of themselves these cuts are damaging and reckless. California students need MORE science instruction, not less, if they're going to be globally competitive. Cutting instruction isn't going to help students learn more, and will lead to corner-cutting by teachers and administrators alike.
Those damaging cuts become catastrophic, however, in the context of No Child Left Behind. Arnold's proposals are likely to cause numerous schools to fail to meet federal standards set by the law, especially when subsidies to low-performing schools are cut. Because NCLB mandates the closure of low-performing schools, Arnold's budget if enacted as-is would virtually ensure the closure of numerous schools in this state.
Arnold's budget also leaves schools facing their own cash crisis during the school year (and in prime testing season):
The governor has proposed to ease the pain, in part, by accounting transfers involving state transportation funds and by deferring $2.8 billion in school payments from April to July. Wells said the state, by deferring payments for three months, would place an "awful" new burden on school districts to secure short-term loans.
It will be extremely difficult to secure those kinds of loans, but Arnold continues to delude himself into thinking the private sector is interested in lending to state government or its affiliated agencies.
There are plenty of other ridiculous elements to Arnold's budget but the kinds of education cuts proposed are a good example of just how badly Arnold has screwed up our state. One has to wonder whether this is a shock-doctrine style plan to force mass privatization of public schools in California by starving them of revenue and forcing them to close when they inevitably are unable to meet NCLB standards.
Two years from now a new governor will be sworn in. I wonder if California can wait that long. |
