- The Governor’s new budget proposal does not come close to “fully funding” education,” regardless of what his spokesman may have said. In fact, the new budget still proposes roughly four billion in cuts so that AUSD is still facing millions in devastating cuts if Measure H doesn’t pass.

- As a practical matter, approval of this budget would mean that all of the cuts the AUSD Board approved this spring would remain cut. It would also mean millions more in cuts for 09-10, since this year’s AUSD cuts did not come close to covering the proposed cuts from the state.

- AUSD’s revenues depend on many different funding streams from Sacramento. The Governor’s proposal appears to restore much/most/all of the most well known funding stream (Prop 98). However, the proposal simultaneously proposes offsetting this restoration by cutting a similar amount from a whole variety of other funding streams. This allows him to score some cheap political points and create some nice sound bites about funding Prop 98. But, as others have already noted, shifting the cuts from one funding stream to others amounts to a shell game. The bottom line is that the Governor’s proposal in January would have cut 4.8 billion from the education budget whereas the May proposal appears to cut 4.3 billion. After the details of his proposal become clear in the coming days/weeks, the number may turn out to be slightly greater or less than this, but it is already clear the proposed cuts would be on that order of magnitude.

- I suspect that Pincher Penny would be inclined to vote no on H whether the Governor’s budget proposed to cut AUSD’s funding by ten million, four million or three million. Of course, voting no on H is PP’s right. In fact, I expect that something close to a third of Alameda voters will join PP in voting no. I just don’t think it is intellectually honest to vote no on H on the basis that the Governor’s budget fully funds education because it doesn’t.

Schwarzenegger’s revised plan abandons some of the controversial cuts he proposed in January,
including … deep cuts to education. The governor instead called for increasing funding to
education by $200 million over the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. But cost-of-living
increases for schools would be withheld - an amount totaling about $4 billion. In January, the
governor had proposed as much as $4.8 billion worth of education cuts, which would have required
suspension of Proposition 98, which requires the state to spend a certain amount on education.
‘This is a budget that fully funds education, solves California’s budget instability and keeps
parks open, all without raising taxes,’ McLear [a spokesman for Schwarzenegger] said.”

However, on the home front, people like Tom Pavletic have called for AUSD employees to solve the district deficit by snapping their fingers and simply taking pay cuts! This in a district which has nearly the lowest administration costs in a county which is also at the bottom of the administration payroll scale, and teachers who are also not over paid by almost any measure, except that of an arrogant know it all like T.P..

This post is meant to be preemptive should any penny pincher take the URL in post #46 as an invitation to further bad mouth and complain about AUSD.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/13/BA2710L7BD.DTL

http://www.notonthetest.com