California Educator

MAY 2010

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CTA, Ed Coalition battle proposed cuts of $3.8 billion ACTION LEFT: CTA Board Member Elana Davidson at a Capitol news conference in May expressing the Association’s support for AB 2492. ments haven’t been reached until late in t he summer or early in the fall. At press time, CTA presi- ers, education support profes- siona ls, p arents, s chool employees, school board mem- bers, administrators, and other school supporters to defeat Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s newest budget proposal of over $3.8 billion in additional cuts to public education. A key element of the coali- C tion effort is securing signa- tures f rom l awmakers o n “commitment c ards” t hat commit l awmakers to vote against a ny n ew c uts t o school funding and to honor the agreement they reached and the governor signed into law last year. The Education Coalition has been posting the names of lawmakers who have already signed the com- mitment cards on a new web- site, www.promisetostudents. com, and CTA chapter presi- dents and legislative contact teams are hard at work seek- ing additional signatures. 30 California Educator | MAY 2010 TA and t he E ducation Coalition are mobilizing more than a million teach- The coalition is engaged in intensive ef forts urging lawmakers to honor t heir 2009 commitment. Schools have already suffered more than $17 billion in c uts — roughly 60 percent of all the reductions — leaving public education in a state of severe crisis. Lawmakers are charged with reviewing the governor’s plan and putting t ogether their o wn s pending p lan, which goes back to him for his signature. “Schools around the state have been devastated by the cuts t hat h ave a lready hi t them,” says CTA President David A. Sanchez. “The new- est cuts will force more lay- offs, larger class sizes, fewer nurses and counselors, and other r eductions t hat a re harming a generation of our students.” The g overnor’s n ewest round of cuts, announced on May 14 a s part of the May Revision, an update of the governor’s January spending plan proposal, includes the education cuts he proposed in January. It also reduces school funding by another $1.4 billion by eliminating the s tate’s c hild c are pro- grams, w hich a re f unded through the state’s constitu- tional school funding mecha- nism, P roposition 98. B y eliminating these programs, the governor is effectively re- ducing t he amount o f t he Proposition 98 guarantee to schools for years to come. The bigger point i s t hat i t harms kids. Timeline for action Lawmakers a re working against a June 15 constitution- al deadline for sending the governor their own final bud- get proposal. The state consti- tution requires the governor to make his line-item vetoes and then sign the final plan into law prior to the July 1 start of the new fiscal year. In recent years, those bud- get de adlines h ave b een missed much more often than met. Often, the budget agree- dents from around the state were getting ready to converge on the state Capitol as part of the May 25 Presidents Lobby Day. During that event, they will be making l awmakers aware of the effects that the al- ready adopted cuts are having on their local schools. They will be urging lawmakers to reject any further reductions for schools and colleges. Solutions for budget shortfall CTA f irmly believes that the governor and lawmakers have t he r esponsibi lity t o find new state revenues to support v ital s ervices, i n- cluding schools. At the same time, t he a ssociation h as been supporting ef forts to close loopholes for both state corporate income and prop- erty t axes, w hich have a l- lowed U.S. and multinational companies to escape paying billions of dollars in their fair share of t he cos ts o f s tate programs. CTA has collected enough signatures to qualify the Repeal C orporate Tax Loopholes initiative for the November ballot. However, legislators can and should take care of this injustice be- fore November as part of the budget solution. LEN FELDMAN CTA photo by Len Feldman

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