The Las Trampas Creek Council of PTAs will host a community forum with the superintendents from the Acalanes, Lafayette, Moraga, Orinda and Walnut Creek school districts on Thursday, April 7. This is a great local opportunity to hear first-hand information on the current state of finances and programming at each district and participate in an interactive dialog between administrators and audience members. We hope you can attend!

Why has education funding in California become a crisis that is now the focus of so much citizen, legislative and media debate? Why have our local school districts somehow been able to sustain excellent performance despite receiving relatively low revenues from the State? While Lamorinda and Walnut Creek schools have so far weathered the storm (by the way, THANK YOU Measure A and B Voters!!), the long-term outlook for our local school districts is still uncertain. Absent major reforms to state education funding or continuing increases in local funding and support, our schools will not be able to sustain the excellent education performance that we have come to expect.

How Did We Get to This Point?
Since the passage of Proposition 13 and the Serrano v. Priest decision in the 1970's, which severely limited the amount of local property tax proceeds the State provides to local communities, our schools have been fighting an uphill battle. Prior to those events, local school districts had much more discretionary control on how to allocate local tax resources, and California's public education system was hailed as one of the best in the nation. Today, California ranks 29th in the country in per-pupil funding and continues to fall, with per-pupil spending more than $4,000 below the amount funded by top- ranked New York. Complex historical funding formulas exacerbate the problem in Lamorinda and Walnut Creek school districts, which are among the lowest in California in per-pupil funding. Click here to read more about the decline in education funding over the past decade: http://www.edsource.org/pdf/RankingsFinal04.pdf/

How Are Schools Currently Funded by the State?
Most of the state money public schools receive results from a formula approved by California voters in 1988. Proposition 98 establishes a minimum annual funding level for K-12 schools and community colleges. Click here for a quick and easy overview of how schools are currently funded in California: http://www.edsource.org/pdf/QA_financefinal.pdf/ For a reader-friendly explanation of Proposition 98, click here: http://www.lao.ca.gov/2005/prop_98_primer/prop_98 _primer_020805.htm/

How Do Things Look for the Coming Year?
Much of this year's education funding debate centers around "the deal" Governor Schwarzenegger made with the Education Coalition last summer to cut $2 billion from education in the 2004-5 state budget in exchange for committing to full Proposition 98 education funding in the 2005-6 budget. Unfortunately, the Governor is not honoring that commitment. Although the Governor's office will quickly claim credit for proposing a 7% increase in education funding in his budget proposal, most of that amount will either never go to schools, or will cover new costs that the State also proposes to transfer to local school districts. Once again, education funding that is supposed to be guaranteed through Proposition 98 will be shortchanged by the Governor's 2005-06 proposal. For more details, here are two informative articles: http://www.acsa.org/doc_files/School%20Funding% 20Q&A.pdf/ http://www.lastrampaspta.org/articles/funding0305.ht ml/

What Are the Prospects for Long-Term Change?
How can this continue? Why should this continue? Is this an appropriate and fair education strategy for the social and economic well-being of California? We do not believe so. However, Many Sacramento insiders assert that now is not a good time to implement education funding reforms because the budget is so tight. We disagree. We have to start somewhere, sometime, and we know it will not happen overnight. The longer we wait, the worse we make it for our kids today, those of tomorrow, and the general economic health of our State. We urge you to get involved and informed.

READY TO TAKE ACTION?
Our districts and communities have done an amazing job with extremely tight resources. By working together, we enjoy top rated schools, whether measured against State or national criteria. This has only come through careful, strategic decisions by school districts that are tightly and efficiently managed, but which now have exhausted or exceeded their one-time reserves. Parent club, PTA and local education foundation funding, and property parcel tax revenues have increased. Parent volunteers must take on jobs, classroom assistance and fundraising responsibilities to cover basic education programs and services that used to be standard in California's public education curriculum. In the past several years, the districts' reliance on voluntary local funding has continued to grow. In the current environment, there is no prospect for change in this situation.

Join us on April 19th for Advocacy Day in Sacramento. You will travel via comfortable chartered buses, receive lunch, and participate in interactive discussions with education experts and state legislators. If you are anxious about the adequacy of support for California' s public school system and want to find out what YOU can do about it, this trip is well worth your time. Help define the reforms and issues that our state officials should address. Book the date and sign up with a friend. Click here for the registration form and instructions: