GOLIS: Local schools pay for state's serial failures | PressDemocrat.com

GOLIS: Local schools pay for state's serial failures | PressDemocrat.com:

"This generation of state politicians won't be accused of being preoccupied with the well-being of future generations. An earlier generation's legacy to its children and grandchildren was a world-class school system that became the engine for unparalleled prosperity. This generation's legacy could be schools and universities sliding toward mediocrity.

On Wednesday, the Santa Rosa Board of Education begins the grim business of choosing among spending cuts that would have been called foolish and shortsighted a few years ago.

Now they are merely inevitable. Dependent on the dwindling support of state government, the district must close a $5.6 million budget shortfall in 2010-11 and another $4.7 million shortfall in 2011-12."

Among the bad ideas whose time may have come: Closing schools, increasing class sizes, shortening the school year, slashing athletic programs, eliminating library positions and more.

“I hope the public is as outraged as we are outraged,” said board President Bill Carle, “but I hope the public also knows why it happened.”

“There is a sense of doom, for lack of a better word,” he added. “(People know) that we are in this together, and we will have to work it out together.”