California’s financial crisis will continue to put the squeeze on already strapped public schools this year as state lawmakers work to close a $20 billion deficit and debate Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new budget proposal.
In his State of the State address earlier this month, Gov. Schwarzenegger, a Republican who will leave office at the end of this year due to term limits, vowed to spare K-12 and higher education programs that have been pummeled over the past two years by the state’s fiscal meltdown.
But after he unveiled the $83 billion spending plan for fiscal 2011 two days later on Jan. 8, school officials said the governor’s words didn’t match reality.
Though Mr. Schwarzenegger said his budget proposal meets the state’s Proposition 98 school funding guarantee, education officials said that would be the case only if the governor carries out a proposed change in the state’s revenue structure that would effectively lower the bar for what its obligation to K-12 schools and community colleges would otherwise be. The effect would add up to a roughly $2 billion hit to the K-12 budget in fiscal 2011, said Scott P. Plotkin, the executive director of the California School