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Self-enforced budget cuts this year could save schools from massive future damage of statewide funding cuts, Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) told a packed crowd Saturday in Palo Alto’s school district office.
Earlier this month Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed cutting school funding by 10 percent as part of an emergency plan to wrangle California out of a $14.5 billion budget deficit.
The proposal requires suspending Proposition 98, which guarantees minimum annual funding to schools, but current-year budget cuts could convince legislature not to suspend the measure, Simitian said Saturday.
He outlined a plan to cut the current budget without spending less on students this year by using saved or overbudgeted money.
Suspending rather than abiding by Prop 98 would start a slide down a slippery slope to more frequent and casual school funding cuts, he said.
“Everybody here should be fighting like the devil to tell people, ‘Don’t Suspend Prop 98,'” he said.
The meeting was one of the semi-annual Education Updates hosted by the former Palo Alto school board member.
Nearly 150 people — overwhelmingly school board members or school staff, some from as far as San Diego — crammed into a conference room and fell absolutely silent as Simitian spoke.
Many were worried about the impact massive state cuts could have.
“We’re talking about librarians and custodians again,” Rose Filicetti, executive director of the Santa Clara County School Boards Association, said.
California is “already the last in the nation in the ratio of counselors to students and nurses to students so this can’t bode well,” Claudia Hevel, a volunteer with Los Altos-based MVLA Community Scholars, said.
Yet some damage could be avoided if Prop 98 is maintained, Simitian said.
Under the measure, the state must spend at least as much on education each year as it did the previous year, he said. Funds to match this year would be scarce next year under the current budget crisis, one reason Schwarzenegger has proposed suspending the proposition, he said.
But suspending rather than abiding by it would set a dangerous precedent, he said, noting Schwarzenegger’s initial 2004-05 suspension of the measure paved the way for the current proposal.
Instead, the state should reduce the current year’s education budget to make next year’s financial obligation smaller, he said.
“Spend less. Collect more. Do it now,” he said.
About $1.5 billion could come from three sources outside the General Fund, he said.
Some special programs are over-budgeted this year, and funds can also be taken from an account of extra funds unspent in previous years, called the Reversion Account, and the Settle-Up Account of money set aside from years when spending didn’t end up meeting Prop 98.
The total $1.5 billion in budget re-distribution would lessen next year’s responsibility by $1.5 billion, reducing the funding Prop 98 requires for both years from $4 billion to about $1 billion, he said.
“It becomes a $1 billion problem,” and legislators might be able to stomach that size, leading them not to suspend Prop 98, he said.
Because his re-distribution plan wouldn’t cause schools to spend less on students this year, he dubbed the non-General Fund sources “the magic dollars.”
The state legislature has 45 days or until Feb. 24 to respond to Schwarzenegger’s emergency proposal for this fiscal year.
After getting input from legislature, the governor will present his revision of next year’s plan in May and the legislature will vote on it by the end of June.
Another Education Update meeting will be held in Santa Cruz at the Santa Cruz County Government Center on Feb. 7 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. (701 Ocean St.).
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