California dreaming of school funds
The US cannot allow allow state and local education systems to implode through lack of cash. But will Congress intervene?
Last Wednesday, thousands of trade union members and concerned parents walked through downtown Sacramento to California's state capitol building, joining six marchers on the last leg of their 365-mile, 48-day, protest walk up California's Central Valley to highlight the impact of education cuts in California.
It was an event full of theatrics – a flag-flying flatbed truck at the head of the march blared the song California Dreaming from its speaker system; and on the Capitol's grounds a face-painted street theatre troupe from San Francisco did agitprop from the stage.
But, beyond the spectacle, the walkers were highlighting an extremely important recalibration of state-resident relations in recent years: as local and state governments have haemorrhaged cash, so education spending – which eats up the bulk of local budgets – has been mauled. The estimates vary, but teachers' groups calculate that somewhere in the region of $18bn has vanished from school districts', colleges', and universities' budgets in California over the past several budget cycles.
In the latest round of cuts, well over 20,000 teachers received pink slips, informing them they might not have jobs after schools open again following the summer break.
While California is an extreme case, the numbers nationally are also pretty dismal. Somewhere between 150,000 and 300,000 teachers and