News Briefs

California’s deficit splits education advocates

Jan 31, 2008 5:32 PM

With a projected $14.5 billion state revenue shortfall, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal emergency in January and proposed 10 percent cuts across the entire state budget. Such cuts to the state’s public education system may tempt lawmakers to suspend Proposition 98, a 1988 measure that sets aside about 40 percent of the state’s General Fund revenues for K-12 and community colleges.

Against that backdrop, Californians will vote in early February on Proposition 92, which would hold a proportion of that allocation safe for community colleges. It would also reduce fees — already the lowest in the nation — from $20 to $15 a credit hour, and lock in funding at California’s 109 community colleges, which serve more than 2.6 million, largely low-income students.

Both the AFT’s California Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association’s Community College Association support the proposition that the CFT says “means access to higher education for all Californians … by lower(ing) student fees, stabiliz(ing) and increas(ing) community college funding, and strengthen(ing) governance of the state’s 109 community colleges.”

Who opposes it? The rest of the state’s NEA, plus the state college and university systems, which think that paying Paul in a deficit year means robbing Peter — and they’re Peter.

Proposition proponents, however, say that locking in spending, as is done with K-12 schooling, will ensure that the state — not the students — continues to cover the majority of the costs of a community college education.

Elsewhere, 20 states — including New York — face budget shortfalls for FY 2009, and another five are expected to join the list in FY 2010, caused in part by the bursting of the housing and hedge-fund bubbles, which will dramatically lower tax revenues.

Despite being one of the 20, Florida is still holding a tax-cut amendment referendum, even as Gov. Charlie Crist is also recommending a $1 billion jump in school spending. Should Florida’s state revenues continue to fall, the money would be picked up by local municipalities through property taxes.

Inside Higher Education, Jan 14.
The Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities Bulletin, Jan. 11
Miami Herald, Jan. 18