School Beat: The Revised Budget Gives Less Than You Think

First is the amount of money. $2 billion was originally “borrowed” from Proposition 98 education guaranteed funds in 2004 via an agreement brokered with the Education Coalition. This deal included a promise on the part of the Governor to restore the money and to make sure that the baseline which determines future payments was properly reset (http://www.protectstudents.org/budget_facts.html).
Until last Friday, the Governor had unsurprisingly changed his tune and was adamant about not returning the Proposition 98 money. Instead, he went after the entire education funding guarantee concept in the Special Election. Now, after being trounced at the ballot box and and seeing poll numbers dropping, the Governor has gotten a gift from unanticipated economic growth.

The health of the state revenues lets him return the original $2 billion that he borrowed, and give back the rest of the $5 billion that should have since been allocated over the next seven years. While the state is allowed to slowly revamp spending, schools remain stuck with less than adequate budgets. During this tperiod when our cash-starved schools were loaning the state money, SFUSD (and presumable other districts too), closed schools, reduced administrative staff, cut programs and made other painful decisions. What a hero.

So the first point is that the Governor is just giving us ever so slowly what everyone more or less agrees public education was owed to begin with (see http://www.edsource.org/pdf/prop98_04.pdf for an explanation of how Proposition 98 works and why these numbers can be so contested.)..

More
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=3289#more