OAKLAND — As of Friday morning, 21,397 pink slips had been issued to teachers throughout California, by the state Education Department's count — just one more symptom of the state's ever mounting, multibillion-dollar budget deficit.

But researchers who spoke at an all-day symposium Friday at UC Berkeley went beyond the startling figures as they assessed the state of California's public schools. They discussed whether taxpayers are willing to pay more for public education. They reviewed state laws that allow Californians to shape complex, far-reaching laws in the ballot box and explored the diminishing authority of government institutions after decades of public cynicism and scarce resources.

Graduate students from the Berkeley Review of Education organized the event in response to the funding cuts and political activism on campus. While some of the speakers bemoaned the crisis facing public schools, community colleges and universities, the tone of the event was more pragmatic than rhetorical.

"If you're going to come up during the question-and-answer session and make strident statements about how California needs to fund its higher education system," UC Berkeley professor Norton Grubb admonished the audience, "you also have to say where we're going to get that money from, because there's no loose pots of money out there anywhere."

Earlier in the day, state Superintendent Jack O'Connell had given an optimistic view of public

opinion on education funding. "When you look at polls, people want to invest," he said, pointing to the support of local tax measures in November 2008.

But Grubb and his colleague Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy, presented a different picture. "We have a population that's deeply skeptical of new taxes to even return to the level of public finance we had just a