Two interesting updates were juxtaposed today. The first was summarized in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about how a group of students, school districts, the California PTA, CSBA (California School Board Association) and ACSA (Association for California School Administrators) have filed a lawsuit arguing that elected officials in California have failed in their constitutional obligation to support public schools. I have repeatedly said (and wrote about) how the California governing system is broken, and I certainly encourage folks to watch the video I created that explains the history of California Education Finance and how the state budget and local school budget intertwine. Regardless of one’s political leanings, it would be impossible to argue that this system isn’t broken. I have no idea if this lawsuit has a chance of success, and what the ramifications would be (on education or in general) if it actually succeeded, but it’s an interesting attempt and should be closely watched.
We have also just seen the effect of this bizarre and shortsighted funding system. Today the San Carlos School District sent a letter out (which is posted on its web site) from the Superintendent and Board President about where we are with the budget and teacher layoffs. May 15th was the second critical deadline to give notices to affected teachers. The bad news is that the budget crisis is still very real and very large. The good news is that the final layoff notices were for a reduced number of teachers (18, as compared to 29 originally in March).
Although it’s of course devastating to lose great teachers (and increasing class size is something no one wants to do), San Carlos has accomplished what many other districts have not been able to do and mitigated these cuts as much as possible. For example, Redwood City is lopping off a full week of the school year and increasing class sizes higher than we are. The relative success of our school district (and I say “relative” as the absolute magnitude of the cuts are still huge) is largely due to three factors:
- the success of the San Carlos Education Foundation, which has set a very aggressive fundraising goal this year
- the aggressiveness of our Superintendent in finding additional revenue sources from grants and new programs such as SMART-E camps
- the mid-year cuts we made to administrative positions earlier in the year
Of course we are still at the mercy of the State budget, which will likely not be resolved for months, and it has significant “downside” risk in the final outcome. As we are nearing the end of this school year, obviously the main thing we all can do to make a difference is to donate to SCEF.
