History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
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Past Educational Opportunity Reports
California’s Budget Is Getting Redder
- 06-18-2010
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By UCLA IDEA Staff
Themes in the News for the week of June 14-18, 2010
Over the past many years, the state’s lawmakers have consistently failed to pass the budget in time for the state’s June 15th constitutional deadline. These late budgets cause confusion, uncertainty, and waste for educators and community mentors at the local level who cannot make well-advised program and staffing decisions if they don’t know how much money they will have. One result, even in years that include modest budget increases, is that students can be in school for weeks or months into the fall, while schools are still scrambling to make last-minute hires of teachers.
One weak ray of hope, however, is attached to the current budget delay: state legislators still have the opportunity to address educational shortfalls.
Legislation in Congress that would help out schools is also under consideration, but there, too, the prospects look grim. One bill would prevent schools from losing thousands of teachers. The Washington Post’s Harold Meyerson (Washington Post) describes Senator Harkin’s jobs bill as hanging “somewhere between limbo and death.” After passing in the House in December, the Harkin bill has languished in the Senate. What began as a $23 billion bill may be reduced to $10 billion- if it passes (Education Week).This erosion of the bill is a small victory for the bill’s critics who claim it did not force states to choose more “effective” over more experienced teachers. Although it is not clear that current measures of effective teaching are reliable and the best way to build a highly skilled teacher workforce, it is certain that there will be many fewer teachers if states cannot afford to pay their salaries.
Meyerson notes that the layoffs will force schools to shrink programs as you cannot “hold summer school without teachers” (Washington Post). As Students across California leave their schools early due to shortened school years many will also be denied the chance to go to summer school. According to USDA spokeswoman Jean Daniel, "federal studies show that 'food insecurity' for children peaks during summer" (AOL News). Without summer school, many children who depend on school nutrition programs will go hungry until “school rolls around again in the fall [when] they will be less healthy and less ready to learn than their peers” (AOL News).
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