THIS WEEK'S "Day of Action to Defend Public Education" could be a constructive uniting of students and faculty from local districts, community colleges and the state university systems to raise awareness of the unacceptable erosion of our public school systems.
Or, it could devolve into an deplorable day of violence.
Organizers must ensure that on Thursday we see the former, not the latter. Critical attempts to save California's education system depend on rational discussion, not the sort of destructive vandalism we saw last week on the UC Berkeley campus when a day of teach-ins on state school funding was followed by a nighttime party that served as an excuse for some to spray paint graffiti and break windows on and near the campus.
We understand the frustration, but violence is not the answer. Clearly, protesters have reason to be angry about state funding that has seen a growing portion of the state budget dedicated to prisons, while proportional spending on the state university system has shrunk.
Similarly, the rapid rise in the number of University of California administrators during the past decade is unacceptable. As The Sacramento Bee reported this week, student enrollment has increased 40 percent in the last 10 years, while senior administration has increased 97 percent, but full-time, tenured-track faculty has increased only 23 percent.
Priorities are wrong. We must find a way
to free up money to protect a public university system that was once a crown jewel and remains the envy of every other state in the nation, a world-class teaching and research institution that helps drive California's economy. We must redirect more of the available university funds to teaching and research.Just as state lawmakers must not enable the gutting of our universities, they must stop the undermining of our K-12 public school system.
We cannot continue to cut music classes, shut down funding for school libraries, allow campuses to fall into disrepair, eliminate critical academic electives, wipe out after-school sports and lay off teachers, thereby forcing class sizes to soar.
At the same time, we encour