Hurst Asks That Sacramento Fix Fiscal Crisis

  • Ken Hurst (with fellow ETUSD Trustee Anita Anderson) in less troubling times, shortly after their election to the school district?s board of trustees in 2006. If nothing changes in the next few months, the district will have made almost a million dollars in cuts to its budget in just two years.

    Ken Hurst (with fellow ETUSD Trustee Anita Anderson) in less troubling times, shortly after their election to the school district?s board of trustees in 2006. If nothing changes in the next few months, the district will have made almost a million dollars in cuts to its budget in just two years.

El Tejon Unified School District Board of Trustees President Ken Hurst read a strongly-worded resolution to a crowded room at the district’s March board meeting.

The trustees voted to accept budget projections that indicate ETUSD’s future is at risk if there are no changes in how Sacramento’s fiscal crisis continues to damage predictable funding for education.

The governor is proposing a 10 percent cut in school budgets, contrary to existing state law put in place by the voters’ passage of Proposition 98 in 1996 to provide steady funding for schools in California.

Hurst outlined the grim statistics in the form of a resolution that will be discussed at the April meeting of the ETUSD board.

This is a synopsis of the points Hurst made to ask that all the trustees—and the citizens of the mountain—consider the facts and make their voices heard in Sacramento:

California’s more than six million students deserve high-quality schools with well-trained educators, small class sizes, quality instructional materials, up-to-date textbooks and dynamic parental support. Governor Schwarzenegger’s 2008–09 budget proposal and the Legislative Analyst Office’s review call for massive and devastating cuts to K–12 students and schools by reducing Proposition 98 in 2008–09.

A $4.4 billion cut to Proposition 98 funding would mean laying off tens of thousands of teachers statewide and would also result in increases in class size, not to mention a further erosion of the support system for students provided by classified and paraprofessional staff.

The El Tejon Unified School District has already been forced to take the first steps toward reducing the teaching staff within the district due in part to the anticipated effect of the Governor’s proposed budget, in which the El Tejon Unified School District could lose as much as $350,000 in 2008–09. ETUSD has already suffered $422,000 in cuts to staff and programs in the previous year.

According to recently released reports and studies, California spends $1,900 less per student than the national average—seriously underfunding its public schools. The California median household income ranks in the top 20 per cent in the nation in the 2005 US Census data, while the California expenditure per student (ADA) ranks in the bottom 35% in 2003-04.

Much of the California economy is dependent on an educated workforce while the underfunded California public schools ranked in the bottom 12 percent on every subject of the 2005 National Assessment Test.

The Kern County Superintendent of Schools has recently changed the ETUSD First Interim Budget status from "positive" to "qualified" as a direct result of the reductions in funding embodied in the Governor’s proposed budget.

The Governor’s proposed budget reductions are fundamentally inconsistent with the state’s goal of improving student achievement, at a time when our students are making progress toward meeting rigorous state and federal education standards. The "Getting Down to Facts" studies show that billions more need to be invested in education in California to ensure the opportunity for all students to succeed now and in the future.

The budget problem was not created by our students and fixing the problem should not come at the expense of their educational progress and success.

California voters approved—and continue to strongly support—Proposition 98 to protect schools and students from harmful budget cuts and to establish a minimum level of education funding. The Governor’s budget proposal goes against the will of California voters.

Hurst concluded with this statement:

Be it resolved that the El Tejon Unified School District Board strongly opposes the Governor’s 2008–09 budget proposal and urges the Governor and Legislature to discuss all possibilities to solve the budget crisis including new revenue sources.

Then Hurst, a geologist who works on NASA projects at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena (and a dad who devotes countless hours to mentoring the robotics team at the high school), pushed his reading glasses down to send a penetrating look to the people assembled in the room: "I am very disturbed about this," he said, "And I think you ought to be too."

This is part of the April 04, 2008 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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