Yet another school year is coming to a close. Standardized
testing is finally over. Students are finishing up projects;
teachers are finishing up curriculum; parents are visiting Open
Houses to see the products of so much work and to share in the
pride of their children.
Yet another school year is coming to a close. Standardized testing is finally over. Students are finishing up projects; teachers are finishing up curriculum; parents are visiting Open Houses to see the products of so much work and to share in the pride of their children.
At the same time we are finishing up one school year, we are already arranging for the next. Kindergarten teachers welcomed the incoming classes of children and their parents. Middle school and high school counselors met with their incoming classes to discuss course selections and explain graduation requirements. Teachers of AP and Honors classes are putting together summer assignments, and librarians are issuing textbooks to next year’s students even as they collect them from the current ones. (No, that doesn’t mean AP and Honors teachers have stopped teaching.)
All of this is very exciting, of course. It represents the continual renewal and growth that is education.
School principals, however, have a perennial problem to confront this time of year. They must build the schedules that will accommodate next year’s students. This is always a challenge, as student needs and requests don’t ever come in convenient multiples of class sizes. In recent years the challenge has been complicated by shrinking budgets, which have translated into fewer teachers, fewer course offerings and larger class sizes, and less wriggle-room to make adjustment. (Truthfully, this last is mostly a problem for our overworked counselors, whose numbers have also been reduced by the swing of the budget axe, so that now they are each assigned 700 students.)
In recent years, our district has already implemented multi-million dollar cuts. This was accomplished through job cuts, furlough days, program cuts and the closure of Burnett School. Copy machines are no longer repaired. We have no more elementary library clerks, no middle school librarians, only four nurses for the entire district and one daytime and one nighttime custodian dedicated to each school. We no longer offer summer school for students who are deficient in credits. Our secondary classrooms have up to 36 students (PE classes have 55), and our upper elementary classrooms have 33 students. At K-3, we have been fortunate to participate in the statewide Class Size Reduction program, which has kept those classes in the low 20s.
Sadly, as our district plans for next year we are faced with even more drastic cuts. Last week, the school board approved more than a million dollars in preliminary cuts, including 25 percent of the remaining Adult Education budget, and the elimination of K-3 Class Size Reduction.
We are not done yet. This week the governor is expected to release his “May Revise” of the state budget, which will give us a better idea of how much deeper the cuts will need to be. In Sacramento, there is discussion of shortening the school year by up to 20 days in order to save money. (We could avoid that by further increasing class sizes – either way, a savings is realized through a decrease in salaries.) There is no denying that the picture is both uncertain in its details, and grim in the overall.
What is going on here?
In 1978, Californians passed Proposition 13, which froze state property taxes not just for homeowners, but also for corporate landowners (Disneyland, Exxon, PG&E, etc.) at 1975 levels. You can be sure their property values have not stayed the same over that time.
While lower and middle class family incomes have declined over the past two decades, the wealthiest fifth of all Californians have seen their income increase dramatically. (The top 1 percent saw an increase of 81 percent in their adjusted gross income.) Not so for their taxes.
Due to the recession, projected state revenues for 2011-2012 have decreased $41.4 billion in the past four years. The projected state budget shortfall for 2011-2012 is $17.2 billion.
Corporate income tax collections are below forecast levels despite a record growth in profits.
The Governor’s initial budget proposal includes $12.5 billion in spending cuts (none from K-12 education), and $11.2 billion from the extension of taxes due to expire. (Without those extensions, the next round of cuts will hit K-12 hard.)
California ranks 47th in the nation in K-12 per pupil spending ($8,908 per year, although Morgan Hill receives only about $4,500), and dead last in number of pupils per teacher.
Despite all this, there are many among us who will return to our classrooms in the fall hopeful for a good year with our students, believing as we do that public education continues to offer “the last best hope” of our democracy.
You can make a difference. Contact your state representatives and ask them to extend the temporary taxes, and help defend what remains of public education funding.
Jeanie Wallace teaches math and social studies at Ann Sobrato High School, has two children who attend schools in the district and is writing on behalf of the Morgan Hill Federation of Teachers.
