If California’s Education System Were a Restaurant…

Editor's Note: Georgia Solkov Jack is a past president of the Redwood City Education Foundation (RCEF), the Roosevelt Elementary PTA and Site Council, and the Kennedy Middle School Site Council. She currently co-chairs the RCEF's Save Our School Music Campaign, www.rcef.org/music.

Susie Peyton is a founding member of Educate Our State, www.educateourstate.org  and has been involved in the Redwood City school district for the past 10 years. She was on the board of the Redwood City Education Foundation (RCEF) www.rcef.org and currently is an active volunteer for the foundation.

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Imagine that the educational system in California operated similarly to a restaurant. It is a four star restaurant with linen on the table, locally produced artisanal foods, and beautiful tableware providing a truly fine dining experience. One would not question paying top dollar for this level of service.

Now imagine that a customer pays only a portion of the bill, but expects this same high standard. Further, the customer promises that some of what he will pay will actually arrive at later date, say in six months or so after he can see his way clear of other more pressing bills.

Would one expect to be able to continue providing this high standard of service after a number of customers came in and also only paid a portion of their bills with promises to pay the rest later? Or would standards start being lowered in order to keep the doors open? No more grass fed meats, but perhaps some lower cost ground meat would be served. And the linens might come off the table, given the cost of maintenance. And say good-bye to the artisanal cheese. And certainly there is no more dessert.

That’s essentially the state of our educational funding system – we’ve gone from a four star restaurant to practically the worst fast-food joint one may have ever visited where the food products are questionable and one might think twice before touching a table. And the outcome of this situation is that our state’s children are wildly malnourished.

Certainly, it will be difficult to build up our economic power in the next decade when our employment base is made up of students whose education has sunk to the lowest funding levels in more than 70 years. For all the talk out of Sacramento about the need for a well-prepared, educated work-force there is little action in terms of funding our public schools to support this notion.

Between fiscal years 2008 and 2011 spending on our kindergarten through 12th grade system has dropped by more than $1,000 per student, approximately 10 percent of a district’s budget on average, or $18 billion over the past three years. And that doesn’t include the fact that for many districts the state doesn’t actually provide all the money promised in a fiscal year for its services.

Instead the state defers payments from one fiscal year to another in order to pay other bills now, while waiting for the educational bill to come later. This deferred payment adds another 17 percent that districts aren’t receiving for costs incurred, and they must instead go to banks and borrow to meet their payment obligations, only racking up more bills to pay that do not directly serve our students.

Is this any way to run a business?

The District is handling this recent budget crisis by raising class sizes for all kindergarten through eighth grade classrooms. This year a kindergarten teacher walking into class on the first day is met with 30 pairs of eyes up from 20, compared to the statewide average of 25, which still puts us in 50th place nationwide. And in some cases there are middle school classes with 38 students instead of 28.

In addition to class size increases, the District is reducing the number of school days in the year, cleaning classrooms only once a week, and laying off essential staff. At this point physical education, arts education, and library access have all but been eliminated. This is coming closer to the unkempt fast-food joint with the sticky tables that no one really wants to eat at, yet we expect this kind of educational environment to produce highly educated students who are prepared to handle the complexities of industries that haven’t even been invented yet – the very same industries that will give rise to California’s economic recovery.

Presently Governor Jerry Brown is proposing to help hold the line for education funding before it plummets to an even more untenable level by extending taxes due to expire this year to remain in place for the next five years. This is not a tax increase because we have all been paying these taxes for years and we are used to paying ourselves this amount. And that’s what this is about – as taxpayers we are paying ourselves in order to have a quality of life that we all agree meets a common standard, and I for one would rather eat in a restaurant with the ability to at least clean the tables.

Learn more about what you can do to help clean up the mess that Sacramento has made over the past decade by joining with Educate Our State, a grass-roots nonpartisan organization that is currently running a “Let Us Vote” campaign directed at the state legislature to allow for Governor Brown’s proposal to come before the voters.

The cost of inaction is significantly higher as the result is an additional 10 percent budget reduction in one year, or about $800 per student, as well as fewer schools days, fewer staff, and - for the remaining staff - less pay.  

A generation of uneducated children will cost taxpayers $48 billion for welfare costs, incarceration costs, and other services. Not educating these students will hurt us no matter what way we look at. Whether it’s from a global perspective, and watching over countries like China and India cruise by with their innovation, or the aforementioned business perspective, California will lose.

Our students need us to support the Governor’s plan and the extra time it provides for the state to make some truly meaningful reform in the structure of school finance in California. We shouldn’t give up on our students or our state.