Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/2864
Left to right: Geoff Landreau and Ken Rawdon from Mt. Eden High School join Mary Walsh in a rally at a Hayward park against the proposed cuts. Massive cuts continue to devastate schools ing to help limit the classroom damage caused by the state’s massive budget deficit and law- makers utterly paralyzed by power politics. The realities are grim for E California’s 6.3 million stu- dents, and could get worse: larger class sizes, smaller dis- trict reserves, shuttered librar- ies, school modernizing proj- ects halted, teachers sacrificing pay to protect jobs. Small victories inspire hope, like the saving of the elemen- tary instrumental music pro- gram in one San Francisco Bay Area district, thanks to public pressure from the Hayward Ed- ucation Association, which staged an effective Jan. 13 rally with more than 500 teachers and students against proposed cuts. Still, Hayward Unified could lose about 200 teachers if it gets rid of block scheduling in high schools and dismantles ducators stunned by unprecedented school program cuts are mobiliz- all class size reduction efforts in K-3 classrooms — as threat- ened — to make $12 million in cuts that teachers charge are clearly overkill. Unlike many, this district has reserves. “This district is making the same mistake as the governor and lawmakers in Sacramento by trying to balance the state budget on the backs of stu- dents,” says Hayward Educa- tion Association President Kathleen Crummey. At press time in late January the statewide education cuts outlook was devastating, with no legislative solution in sight for closing the state’s $42 bil- lion deficit over the next 18 months and no agreement on raising new revenues. The gov- ernor was still proposing $10.8 billion in education cuts over the same period. In the media and in local neighborhoods, with phone campaigns and other protests, CTA members were fighting back. Their anger was fueled by 28 California Educator | february 2009 the governor’s efforts to illegal- ly manipulate Proposition 98, the minimum funding law for schools and community colleg- es, which would result in Cali- fornia students being short- changed $7 billion every year from now on. “The governor’s latest bud- get proposal is an outright at- tack on Proposition 98,” says CTA President David A. San- chez. “His plan will change public schools as we know them. His plan attacks Prop. 98 by illegally siphoning off an es- timated $7 billion to $9 billion from the base of public educa- tion funding this year, and ev- ery subsequent year. CTA led the fight to secure Prop. 98 two decades ago, and we will lead the fight to protect it.” Contrary to what the gover- nor’s budget claims, Prop. 98 in fact says a decrease in mini- mum funding during hard eco- nomic times must be repaid in better years, Sanchez notes. “The governor wants to default on the state’s debt to educa- tion.” Teachers showed compas- sion as they weathered the cuts. In January, San Jose Unified educators voted to voluntarily give up two days of pay — two training days when students are off — to save jobs as the district faced $22 million in cuts over the next 18 months. Janice Allen, president of the San Jose Teachers Association, says the vote to join all district staff and administrators to make the sacrifice was what President Obama was talking about in his inauguration speech. During hard times, Obama said, the nation de- pends on the “selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job.” “What San Jose teachers did was to vote to make a selfless decision to help save the jobs of their colleagues,” Allen says. “And all of this is happening because state legislators and the governor are not doing the job they are paid to do.” In Ventura County, Moor- Hayward Educators Association President Kathleen Crummey speaks about the drastic cuts to Hayward Unified. park Unified teachers agreed to take one day without pay to pre- vent midyear layoffs after the district cut library and counsel- Continued on page 30 CTA photos by Sam DeHaven