Public universities, community colleges, and California school districts including Glendale are facing huge deficits as state government staggers under the load it has created.
A Day of Action rally at Hoover High School, Thursday, March 4, drew district officials, teachers and parents to protest steep drops in education funding. The joint rally occurred just before the GUSD community meeting on district plans to address cuts in state funding.
During the community meeting, GUSD President Mary Boger said California will be resubmitting an application for the U.S. government’s Race to the Top initiative.
This San Francisco Chronicle editorial discusses the state’s failed first round application, and directs blame at the divisive actions of teacher unions. The surprise ending is the hope that California will be able to obtain some of the “free money” the federal government is dispensing.
Desperate school districts look to the state, desperate states appeal to the federal government, but do they really think this money is “free”? What are we paying for more loss of local control? What will we be paying in the future in higher taxes to support more top-down control?
The takeaway from the community meeting was that district-provided medical, dental, and vision benefits combined with life insurance coverage are costing a huge amount of money, and those costs have been increasing by a minimum of 10 percent a year for the past several years. How many individual taxpayers in Glendale who don’t work for the district, the city, or the state, have such generous employment benefits? I spoke with a parent after the community meeting whose entire family has no coverage whatsoever.
Also under the paperweight:
California Students Complain About ‘Tax Hikes’
5 Better Places to Protest Than a College Campus
Coffee with Cal State Chancellor Charles B. Reed