Schools Enjoy Funding Boost, But Long-Term Costs and Recession Worries Loom
“Today is the one-year anniversary of the French magazine terrorist assassination,” Brown says. “What was the name of the magazine?”
The seniors type on their tablets. In seconds, 17-year-old SioFilisi Anitoni answers from the back row, “Mr. Brown, Charlie Hebdo.”
Vallejo City Unified School District is using increased state funds to assign iPads to each of its roughly 1,000 high school students. The district, in a working-class community along the north San Francisco Bay, is also hoping to improve classroom learning by raising teacher salaries and spending more than $2.5 million on new computer and science labs.
Up and down California, public schools are enjoying a rapid rise in state funding. With the state’s economic gains and a temporary tax increase approved by voters in 2012, Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed $71.6 billion education budget for the next fiscal year is up more than 50 percent since 2011. Spending per student has increased more than $3,800 to a projected $14,550 this year.
Schools that handed out tens of thousands of pink slips in the depths of the recession are now scrambling to find qualified teachers, a problem driven in part by low recruitment and high turnover. Teachers are receiving raises and schools are offering signing bonuses. Counselors, librarians and other support staff are being added, along with new Schools Enjoy Funding Boost, But Long-Term Costs and Recession Worries Loom | The California Report | KQED News: