SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California State PTA President Jo A.S. Loss issued the following statement today as the Assembly and Senate prepare to vote on the state budget:
While the specific budget bill language has not been made available prior to the Legislature voting today, it is clear that no one who cares about the welfare and education of children can be satisfied with this state budget. As a voice on behalf of all children and students in the state, California State PTA cannot support a plan that makes additional cuts to education, especially on top of the $17 billion already cut from schools in recent years. However, given the extreme partisan gridlock in Sacramento and the current two-thirds vote requirement for passing a budget, we do not believe this Legislature and Governor can produce a more promising alternative at this time. Therefore, it would not be fair or constructive to delay passage of a state budget any longer than the three months it has already been delayed. Further delay would exacerbate the drastic impact that the lack of a budget has already had on our most vulnerable children and families.
California State PTA notes that this budget rejects the deep and unconscionable cuts that were originally proposed to vital support programs such as CalWORKs and child care. These cuts would have been devastating to many families, especially at a time when poverty rates in our state are rising. The Legislature deserves recognition for rejecting these cuts.
Unfortunately, this budget also continues to dramatically cut funding for schools at a time when public education is so clearly the single most important factor in our state's future economic and job growth. And this budget continues to rely on accounting maneuvers such as a $1.7 billion deferral of education funding until the next year.
These sorts of accounting gimmicks do nothing to address our state's long-term needs or problems. In fact, this budget once again provides strong evidence that our state's school finance system is fundamentally broken. That is why California State PTA is part of a broad coalition of educators and parents who have filed a lawsuit, Robles-Wong v. State of California, to declare the current school finance system unconstitutional. The time to deal with our broken system in a systemic way is now; we can't keep deferring the matter, just as our children can't defer their childhood until a time when the state might be more willing to provide them with the educational opportunities they have a right to.
