How bad does the Republican controlled* state budget process treat California public school children? According to a group of parents and educational organizations, it is so bad that it should be declared unconstitutional. They have filed a lawsuit to get the state to spend the amount of money necessary to accomplish our California educational goals under our State of California Constitution.
http://bayarea.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/suing-for-money-for-california-schools/
May 20, 2010, 3:45 pm
Suing for Money for California Schools
By KATHARINE MIESZKOWSKI
California is being sued for violating its Constitution by failing to provide adequate financial support for education.
A group of parents, students, school districts and educational organizations filed the lawsuit on Thursday in Alameda County Superior Court. It charges that California’s system of financing public education fails to provide schools with the resources necessary to meet the educational mandates set by the state.
In Robles-Wong et al. v. State of California, the plaintiffs ask the court to compel the state to align its school finance system with its educational requirements.
“California’s broken school finance system has denied students the education that they deserve for decades,” said Frank Pugh, president of the California School Boards Association, which is one of the plaintiffs, at a news conference in Sacramento.”This lawsuit is a last resort. We cannot sit around idly and wait for the state to act when generation after generation of students are suffering the consequences.”
Accusing the governor and politicians on both sides of the aisle in the Legislature of failing students, Mr. Pugh said, “The system is broken, and something needs to be done about it.”
The San Francisco Unified School District is among the plaintiffs. “Our kids go to a school where the library staff has been let go; the nurse comes once a week, if we’re lucky; there aren’t enough counselors; and summer school is a thing of the past,” Carl Barnes, father of a fourth grader and a sixth grader who attend public schools in the city, said in a statement.
California spends $2,131 less per pupil than the national average, ranking the state 44th in the country in this measurement.
Adjusted for regional cost differences in the price of educational services, that picture looks even worse. By that standard, California spends $2,856 less per pupil than the national average, making it No. 47 on the state rankings, according to the National Education Association.
The state ranks No. 49 in student-teacher ratios and 50th in librarians, according to the Digest of Education Statistics.
Student achievement in the state is similarly dismal with California tied for 47th in the nation in fourth-grade reading and tied for 46th in the nation in eighth-grade math, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress.
The lawsuit contends that the schools’ fiscal problems run much deeper than the current budget crisis. “The matter has become ever more urgent; the time for patience is past,” Jo Loss, president of the California State PTA, said at the news conference. “We cannot wait to fix our school finance system anymore than children can postpone their childhood.”
The suit is unlikely to affect state support for schools for the 2010-2011 school year. The governor’s office declined to comment on the lawsuit Thursday morning, saying it had not yet reviewed it, according to The Los Angeles Times.
*Republicans are not the majority party in either branch of our two California State Legislative branches, the State Assembly or State Senate; yet using the UNIQUE among all 50 states, California 2/3 requirement to pass a budget or tax, and voting in lockstep with no dissent, the evil Sacramento Republicans control what is in (or more crucially NOT in) the state budget and when and if the yearly state budget will pass.
Without a legislatively approved state budget, the state can not spend any money at all. The entire state then would go bankrupt. The Republicans do not care. The Democrats give in to the heartless Republican bullies time and time again.
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One reason is that, due to massive immigration from Mexico, the state has been flooded with kids, more then it can support. That is why the $/student is so low. We are inheriting the poorest and least educated from there, due to escalating violence and the desire to make more money here. This has overloaded the state, making an already poor situation catastrophic.
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