K-12 Education - Archive

For years public school families in California have been poorly treated by elected officials. That’s because they haven’t had political muscle. Fortunately that’s changing.

Yesterday San Francisco Mayor London Breed made a gutsy appointment to the presidency of the SF Board of Education when she selected Phil Kim, who served as the national director of STEM education for the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and is a charter school champion.

Governor Newsom postponed the annual State of the State address scheduled for today, apparently (according to Politico) until the final results of Proposition 1 are known.

It’s election season. Citizens looking for questions to ask of candidates or state officials might consider the following two.

Last week I reported that Governor Newsom falsely told an interviewer that the state was unable to reopen schools during COVID because the state constitution requires local control of schools, which isn’t true. After my email, some local school officials contacted me to report that Mr. Newsom’s statement actually contained two fictions.

Earlier this week, students in my public policy class at Stanford talked about their experiences as high school students during COVID. Several attended California public schools that were shut down longer than anywhere else in the country. The consequences went well beyond learning loss to include depression and greater difficulties for poorer parents who relied on school lunches or could no longer drop kids at schools while they went to work.

Unlike their counterparts in California, poor students in Texas and Florida didn’t fall behind in math during the pandemic. That’s because they were allowed to attend school in person. According to a new study by Harvard University,

Whenever I use Medicare, the government pays a health provider of my choice even if the provider is not operated by the government. The same goes for Medicaid, which uses public funds to pay for the care of 15 million Californians.

San Francisco Unified School District spends up to 250% more than the average CA school district on OPEB, which are insurance subsidies for retired employees.

Dear Legislators,

The Legislative Analyst’s Office is filled with talented people who occasionally take on impossible tasks. Take LAO’s recent Fiscal Outlook for Schools in which it boldly predicts that “capital gains revenue [will be] strong in 2022‑23.” I can’t predict the stock market next week much less next year but unlike the state I’m not depending on it to finance schools that require stable annual funding. If I did, I’d keep loads of cash on hand. That’s because the annual performance of stock markets looks like this:

When it reported a deficit last year, San Francisco Unified School District blamed Special Education. This year, SFUSD is blaming declining enrollment. Not being blamed is the real culprit.

School employee unions in California weren’t always powerful. That started to change in 1975 when they were extended collective bargaining rights but that alone didn’t confer their dominance. The other ingredient was the failure of good government organizations to persistently resist their demands. Nearly six million California kids heading back to K-12 schools this week suffer the consequences. Treated more like captives than customers and all too often served by poorly-performing employees who can’t be fired, they haven’t even benefited from a doubling in spending per pupil eaten up by faster-growing pension costs.

In 2012, nine California public school students filed a lawsuit (Vergara v. California) alleging that state statutes on teacher tenure, layoffs and dismissal denied equal protection to students assigned to ineffective teachers. The students won in Superior Court but public employee unions appealed and won. Public employee unions played to win for their members. Also in 2012, voters in San Jose passed a ballot measure to reduce exploding pension costs. Public employee unions sued and the Superior Court rejected the reform that would save the most money, but the city did not appeal. San Jose did not play to win for constituents.

Wayne Morse was one of only two US Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 expanding military action in Vietnam. It takes guts to oppose party leadership. This week California saw similar courage when nearly a third of Democratic members of the California Legislature called for budget reserves greater than those proposed by the governor and legislative leadership.

If we are reading the laws about school reserves correctly, California’s K-12 schools are being set up for a fall of epic proportions unless schools or the state save much more from surging revenues.

Dear Legislators,

Non-government-operated schools have been one of the few bright spots during the pandemic. While many independent, parochial and charter schools have been serving students for months, LAUSD just welcomed students back this week and kids in San Francisco Unified are still waiting. Yet a bill has been introduced to crush charter schools in California.

Dear Legislators,

According to the NYT’s Ezra Klein in The Best Explanation of Biden’s Thinking I’ve Heard, President Biden wants government to “deliver for its own citizens.” But that can’t happen in California without your help.

Dear Legislators,

California, Mississippi and three other states grant permanent employment (ie, tenure) to public school teachers after just 18 months of teaching experience. 45 states wait longer or never do.

We don’t like to bother you two days in a row but we had to make an exception after this New York Times article about Rhode Island’s schools. An extraordinary lawmaker who even more extraordinarily walks her talk, RI Governor Gina Raimondo is the only non-CA lawmaker we’ve supported and an exemplar for CA lawmakers, who she addressed at a GFC Retreat a few years ago.

The Governor’s Budget projects deficits down the road but that’s no reason not to enact worthy programs with savings from eliminating unworthy programs, and especially those contributing to the structural deficit to which Governor Newsom refers in his budget message.

After just two years on the job, a public school teacher in California can be granted “permanent employment” status that’s almost impossible to terminate even for significant misconduct. Does that make sense to you? We don’t think so, which is why we are pursuing reform of that statute. Another target this year is a practice that has CA passing up billions of federal dollars at the expense of state services and taxpayers. Both efforts will be wars with powerful special interests, as will be stopping tax increase and other bad bills.

Today’s SF Chronicle includes a misleading article about San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) claiming that “California spends about $12,000 per student per year” but just last Friday, the governor released a proposed budget that on page 61 posts this chart:

Further to our earlier notes on this subject, we were pleased to read this week that California will prioritize vaccine distribution to disadvantaged racial and socioeconomic groups. That’s good news for the hardest hit parts of our population. We remain concerned about disproportionate unemployment in the bottom wage quartile, where California’s 28 percent drop in employment is nearly 50 percent greater than in that wage quartile nationwide.

We are eager for January 4 to arrive as that’s when the California Legislature reconvenes. All Californians need attention but two groups in particular — blue collar workers and families with kids in public schools — are in special need of attention.

A recent article in the New York Times about election results in California included the following sentence (italics added by me): “A measure that would have raised taxes on commercial landlords to raise billions for a state that sorely needs revenue also seemed on track for defeat.” The reporters did not provide support for their assertion — which they expressed as a fact — that California “sorely needs revenue.” They should do so. Meanwhile, here are six potentially relevant facts (sources in parentheses).

In 2012 California raised the state’s top income tax rate nearly 30 percent to 13.3 percent to boost education funding. Proposition 98 spending on K-12 jumped accordingly:

Next Monday Bernie Sanders will address the Democratic National Convention where no doubt he will slam private enterprise and urge more public enterprise. Yet if he compared the performance of private enterprises supplying services to his listeners with the performance of public enterprises in (say) California, he would be embarrassed to make his case.

For too long, California’s schools have operated on deficits.

As Congress considers a $100 billion Covid-related financial-support package to help states and localities gear up for the coming school year, California should act quickly to plug leaks that will cost its own schools their likely share of that aid. The San Francisco Unified School District (UFUSD), for example, which serves 60,000 students, received more than $1 billion in revenues last fiscal year. Even before the pandemic—and despite a 30 percent gain in revenues over the previous five years—SFUSD reported a deficit because spending on retirement costs rose more than 100 percent over the same five-year period. Indeed, the district now spends more than $100 million per year on retirement costs, equivalent to $1,750 per pupil. To make matters worse, that $100 million doesn’t even include accrued-but-unpaid retirement costs for which debt is issued—and the balance of which now exceeds $1 billion.

This is the most recent demographic breakdown of pupils attending the Sacramento City Unified School District:

Teachers working for the San Francisco Unified School District could be paid more if the school district took advantage of federal and state subsidies. The district incurs annual expense of more than $70 million — more than $15,000 per active teacher — to provide unnecessary health insurance subsidies to retired employees. The district pays that expense with a combination of cash and debt, which is how the district has accumulated more than $700 million of extra debt. The subsidies are known as “OPEB” (“Other Post Employment Benefits”) and are provided on top of pension benefits.

Earlier this month Sacramento City Unified School District authorized 11 teacher layoffs to help address a $27 million deficit. But those layoffs are unnecessary. SCUSD should lay off an unnecessary expense instead.

Yesterday, EdSource hosted a webinar about a national database of “District Responses to COVID-19 School Closures” compiled by the Center For Re-Thinking Public Education at the University of Washington.

School budgets will be a big issue facing legislators upon their return to Sacramento.

Earlier this month the San Francisco Unified School District issued a Budget Update in which it forecasts a $32 million deficit for the current fiscal year (which ends June 30) and claims that deficit is caused principally by an unexpected $25 million increase in special education costs. Maybe that’s true but several items are curious…

San Francisco Unified School District’s revenues are 40 percent higher than five years ago yet the district just announced a $32 million deficit. That’s because spending on retirement costs went up more than 100 percent.

To understand California’s publicly-funded school system, it helps to understand federally-funded health insurance. Both Medicare and the Veterans Administration are government-funded insurers but the VA is also a government-operated health care provider. While Medicare enrollees may freely choose among health care providers, VA enrollees may choose a non-VA provider only in limited cases.

Everyone knows housing costs are a problem for middle-class Californians but also troublesome are education costs. Recently the New York Times profiled a San Francisco couple earning $150,000 per year who just had a baby. If San Francisco’s public schools aren’t acceptable to them when their baby is ready to start school, the couple — who already pay taxes to fund schools — will have to pay for a private school that on average in San Francisco costs $20,000 per year. A good education will be critical to their child’s future but an extra $20,000 per year — nearly 20 percent of the couple’s after tax-income — would be a crushing financial burden, and that’s just for one child.

Recently the San Francisco Chronicle carried a story about a corporation donating $17 million to the San Francisco and Oakland Unified School Districts. Philanthropic support of public schools sounds good but what is the impact? Less than meets the eye.

Here’s another way to look at the complicated question of California’s commitment to public education in these flush economic times, with some compelling illustration of the state’s finances. And an unsettling conclusion: more and more tax increases will be the Golden State’s fate unless lawmakers get serious about reforming two large portions of California’s budget—K–12 schools and Medi-Cal, which account for more than one-half of California’s General Fund spending.

Socialism has become a hot topic in the presidential election but that should not be a surprise. Governments in the US have long engaged in various shades of socialism. California is no exception.

New Haven Unified School District students finally returned to school this week after the district and teachers reached agreement on a new contract. But a close vote and angry words are signs no one is happy. The settlement is temporary, just as in LA and Oakland earlier this year. That’s because the district and the teachers want more money but the state already boosted school spending, already raised taxes, and already moved higher among US states in per pupil funding.

The New Haven Unified School District teachers’ strike has moved into its third week. We are troubled this subject is not dominating discussion in the legislature.

The New Haven Unified School District teachers’ strike has moved into its second week, surpassing the duration of the Oakland and Los Angeles teachers’ strikes earlier this year.

Govern For California supports lawmakers who legislate in the general interest. This week two bills will be up for votes in the State Assembly that are pure examples of special interest legislation.

According to the Smithsonian, researchers believe the wheelbarrow first appeared in classical Greece between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C. and could pay for itself in just 3 or 4 days in terms of labor savings. Its invention drove a massive improvement in productivity that freed humans for other endeavors.

There’s a scene in the Monty Python film Life of Brian in which a committee meets to discuss a resolution condemning Roman oppression while their hero, Brian, is being led to his crucifixion. A resolution wasn’t the sort of action Brian needed at that time. But at least he got a discussion.

Imagine if one of Apple’s products had a software bug. Do you think Apple’s management would act immediately to fix it? Of course it would. Now ask the same question about California’s K-12 school system, which operates under rules established by the state legislature and governor. Would they act immediately to fix a bug in that system? They should — but they don’t. Nowhere is that failure more apparent presently than in the school district in the state’s capital city, Sacramento.

Last year, in his final budget as governor, Jerry Brown proudly proclaimed a new policy to encourage the state’s 114 community colleges to pay more attention to how their students are faring.

Teachers are striking over pay as pensions and health-care costs are eating up budgets

“I like cats, unicorns and peace, but I love my teacher!” declares one sign, with two rainbows, held by a young pupil at Crocker Highlands Elementary School in Oakland on a weekday morning. She should have been at school, but instead she joined her mother and thousands of Oakland’s teachers outside City Hall. Oakland’s teachers are asking for higher salaries, support staff and more. Teachers in nearby Sacramento may be next to put down chalk and pick up placards.

Earlier this week the Los Angeles Unified School District reached agreement with striking teachers. The settlement is at best temporary because structural issues were not addressed.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Strike or no strike, after a deal is ultimately reached on a contract for Los Angeles teachers, the school district will still be on a collision course with deficit spending because of pensions and other financial obligations.

School systems across California are experiencing burdensome payments to the state pension fund while struggling to improve schools.

The problem is especially acute for districts like Los Angeles Unified that will see a financial hit in part because of steadily declining enrollment.

On the eve of a massively disruptive strike that would hit families at more than 900 schools, Los Angeles Unified teachers say they deserve a better deal on pay and working conditions.

The district has given some ground in recent days but argues that on at least the money issues, budget projections are grim despite a current reserve, and you can’t give away what you don’t have.

If I had one wish for 2019 it would be that journalists and elected officials cite original sources of information about K-12 spending in California, a subject about which far too many too often cite unauthoritative sources.

Prevent a strike at LAUSD

On January 7, Gavin Newsom will be sworn in as governor of California. On January 10, a strike has been scheduled by the LA teachers’ union (UTLA) against LA’s school system (LAUSD). A strike will impact 600,000 students — including many who get health and nutrition services at school — and their families plus the members of other unions that, unlike UTLA, have reached agreement with LAUSD.

If ever you wanted a sense of the Kafkaesque world that often characterizes California politics, imagine yourself in the shoes of Austin Beutner, Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

Los Angeles Unified School District collected $7.2 billion in revenues in its 2017–18 fiscal year. That translates into $298,000 per teacher, 42 percent more than four years earlier…

Now that Governor Brown has acted on all 1,217 bills sent him by the legislature, we are turning our attention to the 2019 legislative session. One GFC focus will be improving the quality of services provided Californians. Below is a overview of two of the most important services.

Call it The Great California School Squeeze. The state is stuck in a nasty school funding paradox: Even though our school districts have never had higher funding levels than they do right now, many districts face financial peril.

Knowledge, it’s been said, is power. The more you learn about something that affects you, the more you can influence that something.

It’s especially true in politics, whose insiders joust constantly among themselves and with outsiders, including the media and the voting public, over access to information.

One of California’s more important arenas of info-war is public education.

Where are legislator tweets about CA’s schools?

Donald Trump trolls California. Of course, trolling is not a presidential responsibility outlined in Article II of the US Constitution. But many California state officials troll Trump and likewise are not fulfilling any of their responsibilities under Article IV of the California Constitution.

The measure that matters.

California will spend more than $16,000 per pupil next school year and the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office reports California’s per-pupil spending ranks in the middle among the states and predicts its ranking likely will increase as new data are released over the next few years.

For the 12 months ended June 30, 2018, the S&P500 returned >14 percent but California’s State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) earned <9 percent. Some of the underperformance results from the difference in allocation to equities (the S&P500 is 100 percent invested in equities while CalSTRS is not), but CalSTRS’s underperformance (37 percent) is more than twice its allocation to non-equities (14 percent).

Dear California State Legislators,

July 18 marked Nelson Mandela International Day. There is so much to celebrate about Mandela but of particular relevance to your job is one of his most famous quotes: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

You and the governor run K-12 education in California. You write the Education Code, which governs schools run by government employees. No other government-operated enterprise in California receives more money.

Seeks to level playing field against self-dealing adults.

According to the Sacramento Bee, California Governor Jerry Brown has asked the California Supreme Court to accelerate consideration of a lawsuit the outcome of which is existential for California classroom funding.

California has two state-operated enterprises (SOE’s), each with annual revenues of ~$100 billion: K-12 education, which serves six million students, and Medi-Cal, a single-payer health insurer covering 13.5 million low-income Californians. K-12 services are largely provided by public employees while Medi-Cal pays for services largely provided by private sector employees.

>100% of schools’ share went to increased retirement spending.

In January 2012 California Governor Jerry Brown announced he would ask California voters “to approve a temporary tax increase on the wealthy, a modest and temporary increase in the sales tax, and to guarantee that the new revenues be spent only on education.” Later that year his proposal was embodied in Proposition 30, a temporary tax increase projected by the Legislative Analysts Office to raise $6 billion per year for four years and smaller amounts for three years. Marketed as “Temporary Taxes to Fund Education,” P30 passed. Seven budget years later, the results are now known…

But scalable only with action by state legislature.

EdSource reports that heavy investment in teacher preparation doubled math scores in a low-income, mostly African-American and Latino San Francisco school.

Sacramento is flush, but cities and school districts can’t keep up with rising public pension costs.

Nine years into a bull market, housing prices in California have reached record highs. Investors are enjoying soaring capital gains, which in turn has created a windfall for the state budget. California is now sitting on $16 billion in budget reserves while many states struggle to balance their budgets. But beneath this patina of prosperity, many cities are careening toward bankruptcy. Schools are laying off employees and slashing programs. Some districts complain they are having trouble retaining teachers. What gives?

Enabling a cancer to grow.

Sometimes political philanthropy produces bad outcomes. One example is the latest parcel tax increase for San Francisco Unified School District, the campaign for which was financed by political philanthropists and approved by voters June 5. Using a loophole to lower the threshold for voter approval and sold falsely as a sustainable solution to inadequate teacher salaries, the regressive tax covers up a growing financial cancer, reduces pressure to address that cancer, and burdens SF’s shrinking middle class.

Where is the outrage?

Spending on California schools is nearing $100 billion per year, more than $16,000 per student. School revenues have never been higher. Yet some school districts are making cuts. Imagine you are the parent of a child in the Oakland Unified School District, which serves nearly 50,000 children.

With passage of the new state budget by the legislature last night, per pupil spending in California will exceed $16,000 in the next fiscal year…

California school boards are prevented by the state legislature and governor from offering disproportionate pay to employees willing to work in high-poverty zones, cutting pension spending, altering tenure rules or granting principals the power to fire poorly performing employees. The outcome: poor student performance and shaky finances despite a big increase in spending.

Classrooms should be fully staffed with adequately compensated teachers. But that is not the case in California despite a >50 percent increase in spending since 2010. The principal reason is the diversion of school dollars to pensions and other retirement costs. Governor Brown reports annual spending of $16,000 per student but only about half reaches students.

CTA is a powerful political association whose members collect ~$70 billion per year from taxpayer spending on California’s public schools. But CTA wants more. That’s why it has been running radio ads falsely claiming that CTA’s schools are being harmed by funding for public schools not required to hire CTA members when the real cause is exploding retirement spending at CTA’s schools.

San Francisco Unified School District recently published its 2017 Financial Report and Second Interim Reports for 2017–18 here and here. The results are startling…

California school boards are prevented by the state legislature and governor from offering disproportionate pay to employees willing to work in high-poverty zones, cutting pension spending, altering permanent employment (tenure) rules or granting principals the power to fire poorly performing employees. The outcome: poor student performance, inadequate teacher salaries, and shaky finances despite a huge increase in spending.

California school districts must file “interim reports” with the California Department of Education certifying their ability to meet financial obligations. Certifications fall into three categories…

The pro- and anti-reform houses of education land are prepping for the next big battle between charter schools and teachers unions. The great houses in philanthropic foundation land are deciding where to place their bets. But winter is coming, and no one can avoid it.

Everyone must chip in to solve pension and OPEB crises.

It’s not news that exploding spending on pensions and retiree health care is crushing public services in California. It’s a problem that didn’t have to happen, as explained here. But it did — and the result is $1 trillion being diverted from schools and other public services in CA.

Say you run an association whose members receive $70 billion per year from California’s government. Would you try to influence voters? Sure you would.

Retirees subsidized at expense of active teachers.

School funding in California is at record levels…

General Fund tax revenues in Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed budget for 2018–19 are expected to be 32 percent higher than ten years ago yet the same budget proposes only 9 percent more spending for California State University than ten years ago.

Time for more than lip service from California legislators.

In 1951 Oliver Brown sought to enroll his third-grade daughter Linda at a neighborhood elementary school in Topeka, Kansas. African-American, Mr. Brown was unhappy that his daughter had to travel to a segregated black school while her neighborhood school was located only seven blocks from her home. As Ms. Brown later told a reporter, “the walk was very frightening to me and then when wintertime came, it was a very cold walk. I remember walking, tears freezing up on my face, because I began to cry.” But her all-white neighborhood school refused to enroll Ms. Brown. Defiant, Mr. Brown joined in suing the school district and prevailed in 1954 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools were inherently unequal.

Agonizingly slow progress in fast changing times.

In 1968 Latino students walked out of public high schools in East Los Angeles in protest of unequal educational conditions. 50 years later what has changed? CA’s Latino graduation rate has improved but unequal conditions and poor educational outcomes persist and graduating students are often unprepared for college. That’s in significant part because billions of dollars are being diverted from classrooms, too many under-performing teachers are spared from dismissal, and pay and support isn’t differentiated for teachers in high poverty schools.

In June San Francisco’s school board wants voters to approve a new “parcel tax” of $298 per parcel of real property. They claim the money — $50 million per year — is needed to provide teachers with living wages. That’s a worthy objective but it’s not the real reason behind the proposed tax. The real reason is buried deep in SFUSD financial reports from 2012 and 2017:

Attacking easy targets, cowering before tough ones.

Every day the California Democratic Party (of which I am a member) proudly reminds the world that it is leading the “resistance.” But every day it fails to resist the most powerful forces affecting the everyday lives of Californians.

But who has hurt California kids more?

Apparently the board of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) worries that Apple’s smartphones negatively impact child development. Presumably there will now be a lot of research on that subject. But no research is needed to prove this point: Child development in California is being negatively impacted by exploding pension costs that prevent school districts from hiring enough teachers and paying them sufficient wages. Look what has happened to the San Francisco Unified School District…

In his final State of the State address, this is all Jerry Brown had to stay about K-12 education…

Schools are open but shelves are barren.

Everyone can see the federal shutdown is reducing some public services but California legislators are turning a blind eye to their state’s own shutdown. Public schools in Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose and other urban centers are providing just a fraction of full services, resulting in understaffed classrooms, underpaid teachers, and fewer arts, science, math, and other classroom offerings. One result is that the poor and minority students that make up a large share of those urban districts underperform poor and minority students in other states that spend much less per student.

This afternoon, I spotted a tweet from a San Diego parent: 

There’s something particularly wrenching about being asked what services should be cut at your kid’s school to pay for increased employee pension & healthcare costs, when most working parents don’t have pensions. https://t.co/Vs6uMojuSt cc @sdschools

— Ashley Lewis (@AshleyJPL) January 12, 2018

I followed the link to the survey, and a message from the San Diego Unified School District said it was seeking input on how to resolve a growing budget shortfall due to “increases in costs outside of the district’s immediate control, such as healthcare costs, utilities expenses, and state retirement contributions that are all expected to rise for the foreseeable future.” 

Actions speak louder than tweets.

Today California legislators are tweeting quotations from Martin Luther King. They should compare the objectives expressed in their tweets with the state of affairs for their constituents, starting with the six million children in California public schools and the 14 million customers of the state’s single-payer health care system.

Five pro-citizen issues should be on the agenda when the California Legislature reconvenes tomorrow…

It goes well beyond sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment by elected officials in California is all over the news but less visible forms of political immorality are just as prevalent. One example is that of state legislators who sell students, families and vulnerable citizens down the river to boost prison guard compensation. Another is legislators protecting the profits and turfs of cronies while ignoring the healthiness and convenience of 14 million customers of the state’s sub-functional single-payer system, Medi-Cal. Other examples include state officials opposing student civil rights and legislators robbing K-12 students and young teachers of their futures out of fear of powerful commercial interests.

One of the consequences of Donald Trump as president is that he distracts attention from California’s own failures to govern successfully. Nowhere is that distraction more costly than in public education.