by Duane E. Campbell
California, like most states, needs
additional revenue to fund schools and to invest in the future. Our public schools are in crisis - and they are getting worse.
Their decline is a direct result
of massive budget cuts imposed by the legislature and the governor in the last
four years. Total expenditure is down by over $1,000 per student. The
result is massive class size
increases. Students are often in classes too large for quality learning. Supplementary services such as tutoring
and art have been eliminated. Over 14,000 teachers have already been dismissed and thousands more face lay offs .
California schools are now 47th in the nation in per pupil
expenditure and 49th in class size. Our low achievement scores on
national tests reflect this severe underfunding.
Of course the economic crisis of 2007 to the present caused by
bankers and their lobbyists made matters worse. The state took in some $30 billion
less in taxes due to the collapse and thus had less to send to the schools. School
budgets have been cut by some $10 billion.
The question for the anti tax advocates and the Chamber of Commerce, and ultimately for California voters this fall, is can the
economy prosper with a poorly educated work force. California grew and
prospered from 1970- 1994 based upon a well educated work force. The wealth that funds our current
highways, parks, universities, community colleges and jobs is
based upon past public investments. Then, in the period between 1994-2008
over $10 billion in corporate tax cuts were passed making
the current economic crisis much
worse.
California suffers from a decade of disinvestment in education and
in infrastructure. Instead of
continuing our state’s once proud commitment to public education, today anti tax forces have imposed a
Mississippi model on our children and our
schools.
California needs to invest in roads, bridges,
telephone lines, communications systems, parks, clean energy and quality
education. These are the down payments that make prosperity possible. Republican opposition to any new tax ignores the undeniable historic fact that prosperity depends
upon having a viable educational system and a well functioning infrastructure.
As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.''
Duane Campbell is a Professor (Emeritus) of Bilingual/Multicultural Education at CSU-Sacramento
and the author of Choosing Democracy; a practical guide to multicultural
education. 4th. edition. (Allyn
and Bacon, 2010) and Chair of Sacramento Democratic Socialists of America.
Published in Sacramento News and Review. 4/19/2012.
For teachers, If you don't support taxes, who do you think pays for public schools?
The extent of wealth in the hands of a few in California should be front-page news. Instead, we get a daily diet about a so-called scarcity of resources.
ReplyDeleteThat's false. Resources are abundant.
Consider the top four wealthiest residents of the Golden State (all men), according to Forbes Magazine.
Larry Ellison, head of Oracle Corp., the software giant, has a current
net worth of $33 billion http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has a net worth now of $17.5 billion.
Google co-owners Sergey Brin and Larry Page, respectively, have a net
worth of $19.8 billion currently.
The net worth of these four men is $83.9 billion, or 90 percent of
Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed general fund budget of $92.5
billion for the entire state in 2012-13:
http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/BudgetSummary/FullBudgetSummary.pdf
Our daily paper, in an unsigned editorial, argued against increasing
taxes on the ultra-rich:
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/26/4289320/munger-cft-must-let-brown-lead.html
Tax the billionaires!
Seth