Santa Clara County schools chief:
Deserved anger over state budget
By Charles Weis
Special to the Mercury News
When you've been in the education field for 36 years, as I have, you hear
certain phrases repeated a lot. One comes up consistently: "It doesn't do any
good to get mad."
But today, I am seeing more anger among the state's educational leaders than
I've ever seen. One example: Paul Chatman, president of the California School
Boards Association, recently wrote a letter to fellow board members that ended,
"We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take this anymore!"
Educators are angry that the school year has started, and we still don't know
what our real budget is for the fiscal year, even though we are almost two
months into it.
They're angry that the leaders we elect to make decisions in California's
best interests seem more interested in clinging inflexibly to party lines, while
ignoring the principles of statesmanship and compromise.
And they are angry that decision-makers in California, the eighth-largest
economy in the world, seem to be unable or unwilling to adequately fund the
state's schools.
Yes, the governor and legislators face significant challenges. The two-thirds
approval requirement is onerous; the tax system is flawed; the economy is weak.
But rather than seeing open, intelligent discourse on solutions, we are
instead subjected to this perennial spectacle in Sacramento of showmanship and
partisanship. It's easy to understand why the result among those of us who are
affected is frustration and yes, even anger.
This is only exacerbated by a certain sense of desperation now emanating from
the Capitol. Sometimes when solutions are elusive, the tendency is to rashly
choose bad alternatives. I worry that we are headed that way now in Sacramento.
I'm hearing of ideas being batted around that smack of recklessness.
For example: "We just borrow our way out of this, thus patching things
together for one more year." That's a bad idea. The problem with borrowing is
you have to pay it all back someday. "Someday" may not arrive while this
governor is still in the public eye and current legislators are still in
Sacramento, but it definitely will come. It's just a way of deferring pain today
to a lot more pain for our children tomorrow.
Other suggestions would undermine Proposition 98, the measure that California
voters approved almost 20 years ago in an effort to create a reasonably stable
funding source for schools. Cutting the state's education funding — in whatever
direct or indirect way that might be imagined — is simply a crazy idea. A long
line of analyses and studies (with the recent, comprehensive "Getting Down to
Facts" just the latest) have shown over and over that education is underfunded
in California.
No, the answer is not reckless borrowing, or thoughtless cutting. When a
business in the real world finds itself with an income problem, the first
questions that arise are: "Are we working hard and smart enough?" and "Are we
charging enough?"
Our decision-makers should be asking these same questions. We can be working
harder and smarter by investing in our children with a good education, and by
growing the economy. Squelch the instinct to borrow our way out of trouble.
Reform our taxation system with one that is fair, sufficient and reliable from
year to year.
It is time for us to demand of our leaders that they get to work and create a
budget solution that is real and lasting. They need to know that our patience is
diminishing and our anger is rising.
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Charles Weis is the Santa Clara County superintendent of schools and
president-elect of the Association of California School Administrators.
Date last updated: August 27, 2008
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