By: Sharon Byrne
Why did the school bond measures fail in June? Over the years, perhaps voters have noticed that no matter how much money we hand over to Sacramento for education, our kids still test on par with Mississippi. Every year, those of us with kids in public schools face further budget cuts, and try to fill the shortages.
I was the proud parent of a 1st grader when the state budget cuts hit in 2003. We funded art, music, and PE (newly cut) with parent donations of $330 per child. The next year, the budget was worse. We did fundraisers, carnivals, and bake sales. The following year Schwarzenegger’s ballot initiatives failed. Parcel taxes arose as an emergency relief valve for crucial local school funding, until the state budget was restored.
The Great Recession was still 2 years off…
How does California stay mired in this educational morass, year after year, whether in boom times or bad?
Trot out all the usual suspects, but start also looking at the California Teachers Association. The image is apples and pencils, but with 325,000 members and annual dues collection of more than $1,000 per year from every teacher in the state, they’ve got serious muscle. In 2009, the CTA’s income was more than $186 million, all of it tax-exempt.
The California Fair Political Practices Commission reported in 2010 that the CTA had spent more than $210 million over the previous decade on political campaigning—more than any other donor in the state. They outspent the pharmaceutical industry, the oil industry, and the tobacco industry combined.
A brief look at their legislative record:
1988- passed Proposition 98. Compelled California to spend more than 40% of its annual budget on education in grades K–12 and community college. Guaranteed spending removed any incentive to get value.
1993- defeated Proposition 174. Provide families access to vouchers to help pay for private school enrollment. Same money per pupil, higher outcomes. CTA spent $12.5 million on the opposition campaign, and got the CTA-endorsed SOS to change the heading from “Parental Choice” to “Education Vouchers”.
1996 – reduce classroom sizes K-3. Cost California nearly $2 billion a year- the most expensive education-reform initiative in the state’s history. But it worked out well for the CTA, whose ranks and coffers swelled with the new teachers hired.
1998 – spent nearly $7 million to defeat Proposition 8—Use student performance as a criterion for teacher reviews. Require educators to pass credentialing examinations in their disciplines. That same year, the CTA, spent more than $2 million in a failed attempt to block Proposition 227, which eliminated mandatory bilingual education based on a student’s last name.
2002- spent $26 million to defeat Proposition 38, another school voucher proposal.
2005 – spent $50 million(!) to defeat Schwarzenegger’s special initiative election that would have made it easier to fire underperforming teachers.
The CTA excels at protecting teachers, even those who behave criminally, and at killing legislation that would curb for their power. Take SB1530 – a narrow-scope bill that dealt only with credible claims that a teacher has abused a child with sex, drugs, or violence. It would have allowed a school board to suspend an employee for “serious or egregious unprofessional conduct.”
The bill was a response to scandals in the LAUSD this year: two elementary school teachers arrested for lewd acts on children under 14; an aide contacted a 15 year-old girl for sex; and a janitor arrested for committing a lewd act with a child on campus. The cost of proceedings to fire a teacher who behaves obscenely or criminally runs up to $500,000, and can take years. Little wonder, then, that LAUSD has dismissed only 4 teachers over the past decade.
The state senate passed SB1530 33 to 4. But then CTA took the position that it was a “teacher-bashing bill.” The bill needed six votes from the 11-member Assembly committee to advance; it got five ‘”yeses”, two “nays” and four abstentions. Das Williams, who ran as the ‘education’ candidate, backed by the CTA, abstained.
We don’t allow pedophiles to live near schools, but apparently have no objection to letting them teach in them.
From 2003 to 2012, the CTA spent nearly $102 million on political contributions; 99.2% of that money went to Democrats.
The CTA is the big force behind Brown’s tax increase measure. After floating their own, they forced him to change his in exchange for their backing. If it fails, Brown (CTA-backed in 2010) threatened $6b in budget cuts, and shorter school years. This is the same government that ‘found’ $50m in parks monies after threatening CA taxpayers with park closures for lack of funding.
Maybe that’s why the parcel-tax measures narrowly failed – taxpayers sense something is very rotten in Sacramento, and decided against furthering more of same with renewing local parcel taxes, once pitched as one-time emergency stopgaps. Kudos to the school board for trying to fund our schools, but it’s a big hurdle to ask voters to be taxed twice.
Help kids by directing your ire, criticism and reforms to Sacramento and the CTA, where they belong. Then maybe our kids will finally get the resources they need.
Nothing more cynically exploitive than Taxin’ Jackson’s campaign signs in eco-correct green and white with a logo of a an apple and the truncated slogan “Teachers support Hannah Beth Jackson”.
She forgot to show the worm in the apple and left our the word Unions after the word Teachers. Take a lesson, Jackson. How do you spell N.O. T.H.A.N.K.S.
Anytime I hear someone whining about education funding, I just ask them to drive by Monte Vista Elementary. It doesn’t matter where the money came from, how it “pays for itself”, etc…When a school is spending millions on green nonsense like the huge solar panels at that school, that is money that could have gone towards student education.
Schools now pretend they raise money green-washing, instead of holding good old, fashion car washes. By the time the initial investment has been repaid typically over 10 years, those “state of the art” solar installations are obsolete and have to be replaced. Net savings: Zero.
Teach kids to appreciate rather than vilify nuclear power. Tell them to turn off their cell phones and lap tops in classes and during recesses and you cut back on more power than you can ever save with solar.
You are not getting education in schools today. You are getting indoctrination to a single political agenda, which you voters keep putting back in power. That is the power outage you need to support – stop putting teacher union candidates on all your school boards. We are reaping what we ourselves have sown. It all starts at the top.
Speaking of indoctrination…why does every school have an organic garden now? Peabody’s seems to take up a good portion of the side of the school. A conspiracy minded person might think we’re trying to raise a generation of peasant serfs. Thanks, but I have a nice garden for my kids to learn in…let’s just stick to ABC and 123.
It’s because it’s been shown that making food helps kids understand what goes into what they eat. And, no, farming is not peasant work, it’s a massive industry, because without it we’d all pretty much die of starvation. Well, at least those that don’t understand where food comes from. Unless you enjoy the non-stop junk food, candy and dessert many families, and even school lunch systems are starting to indoctrinate our children.
I make food from my garden with my family every day. If California schools really are ranked with Mississippi as the article states, perhaps some focus should be made on education. Heck, the salary of the full time gardener would probably help with supplies for the whole campus.
All this school garden nonsense does is get kids to demand Mommy pay more for food at pricy organic markets, instead of looking for family budget bargains from perfectly good mass produced farm items that have served all prior generations that build America.
All this organic food hype has done is create a generation of overly pampered, high maintenance kids who will play no functional role in our society and have only increased the numbers of children still living at home past the age of 21.
Walk past the ranks of Prius’s parked at Whole Foods lot to view the scary army of Mommies with their high end strollers relentlessly scouring the aisles for any over-priced products so they can prove their are a better Mommy of their hot-house children, than the equally relentless Mommy in Aisle Three.
@Mommy Dearest (seriously?)
Organic gardens are different then “organic”. “Organic” foods are a fad, and a sign of horribly missinformed consumers about how food is processed.
Gardens at schools don’t go anywhere near that. They teach the ideas of “hey, this green thing is a plant, and it becomes this great vegetable”. Our obesity rate has gone up directly proportional with the increase in meat, processed foods, and fast food in the american diet. I personally know several families who only eat out, and don’t know how to cook. I know middle-schoolers who can’t name a fruit other then apples and oranges, or a single vegetable. I know highschoolers who legitemly believe bread is produced in a factory, meat is grown and don’t know understand the purpose of farms. Although I personally wish this could be handled outside the school system, unfortunately it has become an epidaemic that is killing us as a nation.
As for teaching kids to demand organic, I am right there with you. Organic is just hype phrase similar to other fads in history. Schools are supposed to not be teaching from the hype perspective, but rather from teaching the fundamentals about where food comes ffrom. Also, this “organic hype” is a lot newer then the high-maintainence children of today, and to blame that behavior entirely on that aspect is grossly misleading. A leading factor is busier families using less effective parenting methods or “friend” mentality. I’ve substituted at a couple 2nd grade classrooms, and you’d be surprised how many family guy, south park, or simpsons referenced ADULT humor comes up. It’s easy to blame the world, it’s hard to blame oru bad parenting.
The last parcel taxes failed because voters in Santa Barbara are finally sending the message: no more money with no fundamental education reforms. Local schools are getting tarnished by the CTA games in Sacramento who write the rules. The only message they can hear now is your vote.
All that union money is worthless if they can’t buy your vote. Even the schools parcel tax consultant told them this next parcel tax will fail too, but the teacher union fronts on the school board have no second act except tax, tax, tax.
Get some fiscal conservatives on the SBUSD this next election. Use your vote to reform education because the teacher unions will not do this for you. Stop putting unions on both sides of the bargaining table.
Sharon – CTA is not the only one. There are other teacher organizations as well. For instance, The California Federation of Teachers (AFT), California Faculty Associations (CSU), Faculty Association of California Community Colleges (FACCC), United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), The Council of UC Faculty Associations, among others.
I agree with most of the column and with most of the comments, except the really unenlightened one about the garden at Peabody. They money for education in this state and nationwide mostly should be enough to fund education needs. No one here addressed how to improve teaching results or how together kids (and much older teens who don’t qualify as kids) to be interested in education. I taught junior high for a very short time and then quit. It was way outside of my skills, and I was no good at it.
The teachers’ union is good at protecting its members. That’s the reason it exists, so don’t expect that to change. But if you haven’t taught, you don’t understand how difficult and stressful it is. Good teachers are not easily found. It’s not a matter of money, as all of you realized. The system is well funded, but that doesn’t guarantee good teachers and parental commitment to make the system work. I don’t know the answer either, but even the bad teachers are dealing with a very difficult job. If you have suggestions on how to attract and retain good teachers and how to get parents to participate in the educational process, I’d like to hear them, and so would most of the rest of the country.
Stop putting teachers union interests on both sides of the bargaining table. Stop electing teacher union-backed candidates to your local school boards.
Teacher unions have been saying the exact same four things now for decades, after millions of dollars have been thrown at education with no positive results:
Teachers are (1) under-paid, (2) over-worked,(3) under-appreciated and consequently have (4) bad morale which they are allowed to inflict on the classroom.
Teachers want raises and more money for the classroom? Go to Pacific Justice Institute, fill out the form to opt-out of union dues and send that money to the SB Education Foundation.
Starve the unions which are doing more damage to our children and this state than you can imagine. Get teachers back to teaching because many of them love this job, but hate what their teachers unions are doing to degrade the entire profession with their greed and rapacious union bosses.
There will be a voter backlash so get ahead of the curve and opt-out of those union dues now. No parcel tax is passing as long as union bosses get the rewards. Then work on getting rid of the teacher union lackies on the local boards who are dumbing down education for everyone.
Start with Cordero and Limon as the worst employee union fronts, but keep working until you have people who care about education and not the teacher unions on all our local school boards.
Never ever believe a union fronted school board candidate cares about education. They care about more perks, more benefits, more locked in job security even for incompetents and stonewall any possibility of education reform.
That is what you get when you see the union label on any school board candidate – they sold out, even before they got sworn in.
So who is running for School Board in November? Ed Heron is running for re-election, but Annette Cordero is termed out and Susan Deacon is apparently not running again. That leaves two empty seats. There’s still time to take out papers. Anyone???
Ed Heron is independent and a fiscal conservative. Deacon and Cordero were teacher union and Democrat Party operatives. It is going to be hard to clean up these past decades of teacher union abuses in our local schools, just like it has been on our city council and board of supervisors.
Maybe the school bonds failed because they ran a poor campaign? It sure wasn’t anything impressive. You can’t just assume. People need to know exactly what there money is funding.
Parcel taxes merely cover up poor budgeting if they are demanded to be endlessly renewed.
That is why you couldn’t figure out what they were to be used for. They are now just added to the operational pot and we get told they are now necessary for “essential” programs. With no explanation why the basic school budget was not being used for “essential programs”.
Parcel are fine for one time projects. Those you can see, touch and feel where you money is getting spent. But these last parcel taxes were now being used to balance the budget, which means they are intended to be permanent.
They needed to get voted down this last time; and they need to get voted down again.
That is what voters have to watch out for or else they will see these parcel taxes overwhelm any Prop 13 property tax protections they thought they had.
Pay attention to what it means to put “tax and spend” people on your school boards. They create budgets that require continual new taxes to support them, because the unions who have no end to their own personal demands on your tax dollars.
Wow, all one sided and uneducated.
Teachers Unions fought for desegregation. Teachers unions fight to teach all students. Teachers unions work to ensure that everyone has their constitutional right to due process. Teachers fight so that gender-based laws are not on the books, like women not allowed to date if single or not being able to wear pants. Teacher unions fight for better professional development and proper funding for in and out of the classroom expenses.
To counter the “author’s” list. Prop 98 was a response to the cut to education funding due to Prop 13 which gave a drastically unfair advantage to corporate tax cut and slashed funding from the local level. Before Prop 13, the state had a reserve, immediately afterwards Ca had a deficit.
Prop 174 was an attempt to privatize public schools. We should not fund religous or other private schools that restrict access for those that can afford it.
Class size reduction was Gov Pete Wilson’s brainchild, not the teachers unions. He wanted to tie up the money that had to go to education and he did it blindly and recklessly.
1998 Prop 8 was more than what was stated. The ed code already requires student performance to be a part of the evaluation, this would have required state testing. It was not created for that purpose nor is it a good indicator.
Prop 227 had many flaws but mostly it was a anti-immigrant proposition.
Don’t be lemmings learn the truth, educate yourself and what unions and specifically teachers unions do.
We don’t use present tax dollars to reward past behavior; nor the teachers unions historical revisionism of it, which is why so many of our students get such lousy educations.
Classrooms have become teacher union propaganda factories. Teachers unions pushed smaller class sizes because it would mean hiring more teachers and creating more union members.
No proof anywhere smaller class sizes actually improved education — only teacher union membership. Teacher union tool Supt of Education (our very own) Jack O’Connell pushed that boondoggle on the public; not Pete Wilson
Prop 98 guarantees 50% of all the tax income goes to education. K-12 has proven they have been lousy stewards of this mandated largesse devoted 100% to education. But have rewarded themselves with lifetime benefits and perks.
Teacher unions go apoplectic with anything that attempts to reform education for our children. Buzz word the teachers unions love to use : anti-”performance based” education. As in actually asking for teachers to be accountable for the results in their classrooms.
You get robot-speak from teachers unions. That is what $1000 a year of your tax dollars buys; the amount each teacher is now forced to pay the unions who use that money to screw up the system even more. How much teacher union money (your tax dollars) was used to buy Das Williams – one of his biggest campaign contributors.
If teachers are serious about education reform, they can opt-out of mandated teacher union dues and donate that money to any charitable education reform organization they choose. That would be the first good-faith gesture teachers to show they are serious about improving education. Then stop blocking “performance based” education reform.
I see one side that is uneducated, and it is the Mouth for the Unions Robert S who thinks insulting people is a winning strategy. This is going to be a teaching moment after all.
The media has caught up because it is now identifying the voice of the unions, instead of the unqualified voice of the various employee groups. Today I saw “nurses union” makes a statement. Before it was just “nurses” makes a statement. This is a teaching moment.
Voters don’t share the same romanticized version the employee unions feel about themselves. This is a good thing. Reality wake-up call work for everyone. The employee unions who got so bloated and out of touch. And the voters, who thought they had lost control of the democratic process.
A re-balancing of power is taking place. Excellent.
How about we focus on what really matters? Prop 30 contains NO SCHOOL REFORM. Moreover, despite claims to the contrary, newspapers from across the political spectrum all agree that it will mean NO NEW MONEY FOR CLASSROOMS.
That’s the tragedy. No wonder nobody trusts the government.
Governor Brown’s tax initiative Prop 30 is being oversold, if anyone claims it will put money directly into classrooms.
It will used primarily to pay down the massive state deficit, reported at various times to be $20-38 billion dollars in the hole. And employee pension liabilities remain one of the state’s biggest unfunded liabilities.
This new Prop 30 tax money will be used to clean up past problems from prior unbalanced budgets. And it may well kill the already weak economy making things overall even worse.
Anyone who claims Prop 30 is going directly into the classrooms is lying. Another “for the children” voter scam. Schools have to kick in more this year for CALPERS and CALSTRS pension liabilities, so any new money that might trickle down to schools from Prop 30 tax increases immediately goes to cover these growing employee pension liabilities.
This is why without structural public employee reform, throwing more money at “education” only makes the problems worse.
Pedro Paz, PhD who works with First Five also signed up to run for SBUBD along with Ed Heron. Third slot still open.
Interesting there are so few candidates for these offices this year now that whom ever wins can no longer “spend other people’s money” for employee union benefits. The candidates election have to actually be interested in education for our children and work with the tax dollars that still remain.
The demand for a permanent parcel tax for SBUSD proved those who sat on this board left a mess for others to clean up. No wonder so few want this job. But a little austerity is a good way to clean out the elected riff-raff who merely ran up the deficits and ignored the outcomes.
Who’s running for the SBCC seats? There are three openings: Jurkowitz, Villegas and Livingston.
Redistricting created seven new SBCC single district seats. Filing for three of them will be open until August 10 for the 2012 election.
Marianne Kugler has filed for the City of Goleta seat. Two others remain empty as of Friday 8/3/12: (1) Downtown Santa Barbara East and Westsides/Milpas area and (2) for the Unincorporated County with some SB and Goleta precincts.
Check with County Elections office for the map of these new single district SBCC seats.
Four new SBCC districts will be open in 2014:
(1) Mesa/West Beach/Westside
(2) Carpinteria/Montecito;
(3) Hope Ranch/Isla Vista
(4) Riviera/Upper State/Mission Canyon
Thanks! I did go out to the elections office. They said they had no information, not even maps of the districts and told me to check with city college. I have found maps online, but no info about how many signatures, etc. are required. Reminds of the old saying: suppose they gave an election and no one came!
This is exactly why Proposition 32 is so great. It not only stops the unions from taking money out of members’ paychecks and thus allowing them to decide for themselves what political measures they want to support, but also forbids unions from making political contributions period. Prop 32 also forbids corporations from making political contributions, so it evens the playing field and helping voters’ voices be heard over the special interests that have dominated California politics for too long.
In the past 4 years while I have been on the School Board we have cut over $20,000,000 from the budget. Parcel Taxes H & I totalling $1.6 million per year did not replace these cuts and in fact were used exactly per the voters wishes by supplementing math, music, technology, theater arts, science, foreign language and 9th grade math class size reduction.All expenditures are well documented on the District Website, by auditors and by Citizen Oversight Committees. I’m happy to discuss the District’s financial situation and/or the reasons for asking for additional parcel taxes at this time with anyone and can be contacted by email at edheron@cox.net or at 687-7639. Ed Heron, Santa Barbara Unified School District Board Member
Thank you for running again, Mr. Heron, and for the great leadership and intelligence you bring to the discussion and the school board.
“Math, music, technology, science and foreign language” according to my calculations should have been covered under the basic state funding. These are core curricula.The fact SBUSD needs additional parcel tax money to supplement its budget to provide these basics means state money for basics has not been well spent. That is the crux of the parcel tax issue.
Spending state money on more employee perks and benefits is not putting money into the classrooms, but into the employee’s pockets. There is a difference. Students are not being well served if it takes parcel taxes to give them what they should be getting in the first place.
Someone else is getting money that should be going for these curriculum basics. Who and what is that? When employees choose to work for the state, they take the ups and downs of the state budget as part of their employment contract. Employee costs remain the largest part of any school budget. This is where savings must take place in down times. That is the essential nature of working for the state.
The threat SBUSD students will not get “math, music, technology, science and foreign language” instruction unless local voters constantly get dunned for permanent local property tax money is unconscionable.
Vote no on all future renewable parcel taxes. The last one was meant to be temporary short-fall spending. That is why it was passed. There was no voter intention to make those prior parcel taxes permanent. That signifies poor budgeting; not temporary need.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently overturned the 100 year old Montana law prohibiting corporate contributions. Wouldn’t that make Prop 32 unconstitutional?
The state’s plunge into major dysfunction can be traced back to two recent union-friendly legislature actions:
1. Mandating all public employees have to join the unions.
2. Skimming automatic union dues off the top of public employee paychecks and sent directly to the employee union bosses.
Once both of these laws were put into place, the democratic process broke down completely. If you were unaware of these two major legislative act, you fail then to understand why voters must stop putting public employee unions on both sides of the bargaining table.
Stop putting union-backed candidates into positions of power that keep rewarding themselves, at your own expense. Once you determine a candidate is backed by public employee unions, you now know what you will get if you keep electing them: state gridlock and dysfunction.
Starve public employee unions at the ballot box. Keep unions only on one side of the bargaining table, where they belong. Vote for political independence and restore bi-partisan legislative integrity.
@martin… Obesity has nothing to do with people not knowing where food comes from and everything to do with the corporatist government you support subsiding things such as hfcs which are poisoning our populace.
@el_smurfo to say it has nothing to do with obesity is wrong. Yes, if corporations cared more about their customers health then profits, they would might not advertise junk food, but reality is (1) it’s a free speech nation we live in, so as long as it is not incorrect, it can be stated, and (2) no business is going to take responsibility for the health of the citizens.
It is far easier to educate a person to think about “is this a good food choice” then get corporations to not advertise a 1lb burger that’s only 70% lean. That’s the point I was making, and nearly every food health agency also makes that point.
I don’t have time to pull up all my sources, but google Jamie Oliver’s food revolution” to see one aspect of this. Trying to get a school to get better health choices (removing vending machines, removing flavored milk, adding fruits/vegetables, getting kids to actually eat enything other then meat and starches) is like running through a brick wall. School regulations are pushed through congress, who is more keen to political interest then national health. For example, the recent regulation allowing a pizza to count as 3 servings of vegatables in school lunches was backed by mcdonald’s, KFC, and several other fast food organizations. Unfortunately our interests lose out to the interests of a politician. Parents don’t know or care about what their kids eat. Schools themselves are so pinched budgetwise, that fried chicken is 50% cheaper then a salad. Parents are so busy that it’s easier to send them with cash instead of a meal, which then gets spent at the nearby jack in the box rather then a school lunch.
This is also seen in day-to-day. You don’t see ads for home-cooked meals, you see ads for soda, fast food, and candy. A person educated in food health doesn’t even see those commercials, they get tuned out. A non-health-conscious person sees those ads, then goes and buys the food.
If you’re relying on a school to feed your child, or even educate them about nutrition at age 5, you have failed as a parent.