Louisiana Educator: School Disciplinary Authority is Being Seriously Eroded

Louisiana Educator: School Disciplinary Authority is Being Seriously Eroded:

School Disciplinary Authority is Being Seriously Eroded

This article in Education Week magazine describes a growing national trend to reduce educator authority to suspend students for disciplinary infractions. A major substitute for out-of-school suspension is a program called restorative justice. In this scheme, teachers are expected to refrain from removing disruptive students from the classroom and instead implement various interventions. As the article explains, denying teachers the authority to remove extremely disruptive students often infringes on the rights of other students to receive productive instruction.

This is how the writer explains the issue:

Why can't Johnny read? Or, assuming he can, why isn't Johnny closing the achievement gap?

It's politically fashionable to blame his tenure-protected teacher. But might it have more to do with the pathologically disruptive classmate who, given infinite "second chances" by detached policymakers and feckless administrators, never gets removed from Johnny's classroom?

Thanks, in part, to an increasingly popular behavior-management approach known as "restorative justice," soft discipline is on the rise in public schools at the same time that education reformers are demanding higher standards and teacher accountability.

Restorative justice emphasizes correction and counseling over punishment, and seeks to replace strict zero-tolerance discipline policies with collaborative opportunities for restitution. Its primary goal is to keep students in school rather than suspending or expelling them.

Generally proponents of alternatives to suspensions are not the professionals who must deal with disruptive behavior in the classroom on a daily basis. It is relatively easy to be a "Monday morning quarterback" and insist that there must be a way to correct student misbehavior without the need to resort to removal of a student from the learning environment. Often the "experts" on such alternatives are persons who never have to actually implement these "miracle cures" in a real classroom setting. You see it is much easier to advocate for these alternatives to suspension than to actually implement them!

In Louisiana our State Department of Education has for several years recommended a program called Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports known as PBIS.  Many Louisiana school systems require schools to implement PBIS as a way of reducing suspensions.  But the problem is that many teachers complain that PBIS greatly reduces the teacher's ability to take immediate action to stop disruptive, dangerous or disrespectful behavior by removing a student from the classroom. Such behavior often interferes with orderly and effective instruction of the great majority of students whose instruction is put on hold while the teacher fills out paperwork and then attempts to accommodate disruptive or disrespectful students using this alternative strategy.

Right now state law in Louisiana gives each teacher the right to remove extremely disruptive or disrespectful or dangerous students from the classroom by simply filling out a discipline referral form and sending the student to the appropriate disciplinary administrator. That is currently the law and the teacher should have the right to use the law to insure that she/he can effectively conduct class without interruption. But some school systems and some administrators have instructed teachers that they may not remove a student unless the teacher has implemented various steps of the PBIS procedure such as documenting several disruptive incidents and sometimes even telephoning or conferencing with the parent. But such alternatives for the one disruptive student can take away from time the teacher could be instructing the class. Is is right to deny or delay instruction of cooperative students to deal with one student who refuses to comply with the teacher's directives? I believe that school systems that deny a teacher the right to implement immediate removal of extremely disruptive or disrespectful students are in violation of state law. But there are current attempts to change state law to take away the teacher's right to remove such students.

During the 2016 legislative session, the legislature debated a bill(HB 833) by Representative Leger that in its original form would have forced schools with 150% of the average number of student suspensions to implement a plan to curtail suspensions by the use of alternatives to suspensions such as Restorative Justice or PBIS. Many administrators and teachers contacted their legislators and explained that such mandatory restrictions would tie the hands of principals and teachers in schools that faced greater than average challenges to maintain a productive classroom environment. Does it surprise you to learn thatLouisiana Educator: School Disciplinary Authority is Being Seriously Eroded:

I Am So Sick of White People’s Excuses (And I’m White!) | gadflyonthewallblog

I Am So Sick of White People’s Excuses (And I’m White!) | gadflyonthewallblog:

I Am So Sick of White People’s Excuses (And I’m White!)

What the heck is wrong with us, white people?

Systematic racism is all around, but we refuse to see it.

Oh, and I do mean REFUSE. It’s not a matter of being unable to see it. Our eyes and minds work just as well as anyone else’s. We can perceive reality. Too many of us just choose not to.

According to the Guardian, at least 793 Americans have been killed by police so far this year. That number includes 194 black people or 4.86 per million. That’s more than double the rate for white people at 1.96 per million.

This is not an opinion. This is an undeniable fact. Every number is backed up with verifiable data. And moreover, it follows the same pattern we’ve seen for a couple of years now since news organizations have taken up the slack from the federal government and started counting.

Why does that not worry more white people? It worries me. I don’t want to live in acountry where police use lethal force so often against civilians, so much more than almost any other developed country on Earth. And I don’t want my black friends and neighbors to be targeted so much more.

I’m a middle school teacher. Most of my students are black. I don’t want to have to worry that they or their parents are going to be murdered just because of an excess of melanin. Street gangs are worrisome enough without having to add into the mix many of the very law enforcement officers that are supposed to keep us safe from those gangbangers.

But when you bring this up to white folks and other facts detailing the systemic racism that pervades our society, you get every excuse in the book.

They simply refuse to engage with what you’re saying. They deflect and redirect and change the subject – and they don’t even seem to realize they’re doing it.

Blue lives matter, they say. All lives matter. Every form of life seems to matter to white people – except explicitly black lives.

We seem to think it’s impossible to care about both police and African Americans. We seem to think any expression of the value of human life has to be universal without mentioning individual groups that are at a higher risk than others.

It’s wacko, clearly a way of shutting down a conversation white folks will do I Am So Sick of White People’s Excuses (And I’m White!) | gadflyonthewallblog:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Note to some fellow lefties...

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Note to some fellow lefties...:

Note to some fellow lefties...

Students from Johnson C. Smith University at a rally for Hillary Clinton in Charlotte, North Carolina. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times        

Sorry to say, rapacious capitalism will still be here in November. Not only that, but I doubt it will ever be simply voted out. Even if a "socialist" like Bernie were to someday be elected (I wish). But maybe that's just old-school me.

Whatever the case, come the first of the year, either Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump, will be our next president and Jill Stein and Gary Johnson will have taken their campaign funds and gone home, a la Ralph Nader and the rest of those perennial presidential spoiler candidates.

That's when the real movement for social justice, peace and racial equality needs to kick into gear again -- after the election, no matter who is elected.

NYT columnist Charles Blow, speaking to Morgan State Univ. students, tries to break through the reported millennial political malaise and encourage a large youth turnout for Clinton.

First — and this cannot be said enough — Clinton and Trump are not equally bad candidates. One is a conventional politician who has a long record of public service full of pros and cons. The other is a demagogic bigot with a puddle-deep understanding of national and international issues, who openly courts white nationalism, is hostile to women, Mexicans and Muslims, and is callously using black people as pawns in a Donnie-come-lately kinder-gentler campaign.

As an educator, I would also include Trump's pledge to do away with public education or what Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Note to some fellow lefties...:

This Was The Summer of Charter School Discontent | Daniel Katz, Ph.D.

This Was The Summer of Charter School Discontent | Daniel Katz, Ph.D.:

This Was The Summer of Charter School Discontent

As summer gives way to Fall, it is worth taking note how shifts, both subtle and substantial, are changing the ground on which charter school advocates fight for more of our public education system.  This is not what they are used to.  Backed by billionaire financing, using that money to pull the Democratic Party towards education policies more typical of the Republican Party, calling in favors from elected officials who owe their donors, getting unfettered and poorly monitored largess from the federal government, permitted to engage in practices that would land any public school district in a federal civil rights lawsuit, and existing in a regulatory environment that is charitably described as “permissive,” charter schools and their advocates are used to owning the conversation…and pretty much getting their way.

Slowly — but possibly steadily — that is changing.

An early blow actually came last November when current Democratic Party nominee for President Hillary Clinton was campaigning and made an entirely factual observation about the charter school sector as a whole:

“Most charter schools — I don’t want to say every one — but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them. And so the public schools are often in a no-win situation, because they do, thankfully, take everybody, and then they don’t get the resources or the help and support that they need to be able to take care of every child’s education.”

There is literally nothing inaccurate about that observation.  Self selection helps charter schools in general with their student population, and many flatly rig their supposedly open lottery processes.  The attrition rates at many charter schools, especially ones that apply incredibly narrow disciplinary regimes to their students, are well established, and the enrollment and financial impacts of these practices on host districts are also well known.  Every observation she made in that comment was fundamentally true.

Which did not stop major charter school advocates from lamenting her statement.  The pro-charter and hedge fund backed group “Democrats” for Education Reform (DFER) immediately released a response saying, it was “highly disappointing and seemed to reinforce fears about how her endorsements from both major teachers unions would affect her K-12 platform.”  This is the same DFER that enthusiastically responded to Secretary Clinton’s campaign announcement, but which apparently has problems with her suggesting that charter schools be held to the same standards as fully public schools and doesn’t want anyone noting how quickly many charter operators purge themselves of students with disabilities, with behavioral needs, or with second language learning needs.

Since then, Secretary Clinton seems to have tried a bit of a pivot, saving her most negative comments for so-called “for profit” charter schools, which, to be fair, are a general disaster zone of a sector.  However, as Peter Greene rightly noted in July, this is a distinction in desperate search of a difference.  An actual charter school can be a non-profit entity run by a for profit charter management organization (CMO).  A non-profit CMO can contract exclusively with for profit vendors that the CMO operators have a financial interest in.  Real estate plays abound in the charter school sector, and various investment arrangements allow guaranteed returns for large financial firms.  Operating as a not for profit also doesn’t stop charter school administrators from paying themselves extravagantly from the public money they receive.

In fact, these very issues were at the heart of a Last Week Tonight segment by John Oliver.  The comedian and social critic was blistering.  While explicitly avoiding the debate over the existence of charters and carefully noting that he was looking at the problems associated with a poorly regulated sector taking public funds, Mr. Oliver looked at financial scandals and fraud in charter schools across the country:

This level of scrutiny has been sorely lacking over the quarter century of charter school growth and promotion, but Mr. Oliver was specific and devastating, looking at schools that suddenly shut down without warning, crooked financial arrangements, questionable charter school applications, and oversight laws allowing administrators to select their own non-profit organizations as the legal overseer of their owns charters.  Consider the quote in this screen shot warning parents in Philadelphia what to do before selecting a charter school:

Kind of says it all, doesn’t it?

But the charter sector is still only in the denial stage of grieving, so, despite Mr. Oliver’s careful framing of his examination of fraud and mismanagement, the This Was The Summer of Charter School Discontent | Daniel Katz, Ph.D.:

College Board chief promises changes to SAT test amid controversies | Reuters

College Board chief promises changes to SAT test amid controversies | Reuters:

College Board chief promises changes to SAT test amid controversies

The maker of the SAT, America’s oldest college-entrance exam, promised to streamline its new math questions and scale back the reuse of tests, a longtime practice that has made the exam vulnerable to cheating.

David Coleman, chief executive of the College Board, said the New York not-for-profit organization wants to simplify the word problems on the new SAT’s math sections to eliminate “superfluous words.” His remarks Thursday, at a conference of colleges and guidance counselors, came a day after a Reuters report detailed how the College Board’s new test contained math problems that are much wordier than internal specifications called for.

Coleman said the College Board also aims to reduce its practice of recycling SAT questions used on prior exams. Reuters articles earlier this year revealed how test-preparation companies in Asia are systematically harvesting old questions and having their students practice on them. When those questions are reused on exam day, the clients enjoy a big advantage over students who haven’t seen the material before.

The SAT and its rival, the ACT exam, play a major gate-keeping role in U.S. higher education. American colleges and universities, especially the most selective ones, use the tests in choosing among applicants. Millions of high school students take the exams each year.

Coleman was pressed about the math sections and the exam recycling by the audience during an appearance at the annual conference of the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

Judi Robinovitz, a Florida educational consultant, expressed concern about a Reuters report Wednesday that the College Board had ignored its own internal research showing that the math questions on the new SAT were too long. A reviewer hired by the College Board and other experts warned this could harm students who do not speak English as a native language. (reut.rs/2cwuirH)

Coleman said the College Board has seen “no meaningful difference” in completion rates on the new SAT between students whose first language is not English and those who are native English speakers. But he added that changes are in store for the new test, which debuted in March.

“We are going to do everything we can to further simplify the mathematics section. Using superfluous words is superfluous,” he said, later adding, “Every extra word should go. Complex, distracting situations should go.”

He said later, “I think the College Board should do everything it can because I’m worried about the perceptions in the article.”

Robinovitz, who previously worked at the Educational Testing Service, which has done test development for the College Board, said in an interview after Coleman's appearance that she was pleased he had promised to simplify the language of the math sections.

Coleman was also asked by a college consultant in the audience about cheating on the SAT, and whether the College Board planned to do away with reusing test questions and switch to single-College Board chief promises changes to SAT test amid controversies | Reuters:

Students Are Pulling a Kaepernick All Over America — and Being Threatened for It

Students Are Pulling a Kaepernick All Over America — and Being Threatened for It:

Students Are Pulling a Kaepernick All Over America — and Being Threatened for It

STUDENTS ARE BEING threatened with punishment for not participating in rituals surrounding the national anthem or Pledge of Allegiance — and they are fighting back.

Since NFL 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat during the national anthem in August to protest oppression of people of color, many Americans, particularly professional athletes and students, have followed suit. But their constitutional right to engage in such gestures of dissent is not always being respected.

Threats from school administrators and teachers have put free speech advocates like the ACLU on high alert. At Lely High School, a public school in Naples, Florida, the principal told students that they would be removed from athletic events if they refused to stand during the national anthem — though he said the quote was misunderstood when the ACLU of Florida reached out.

“You will stand, and you will stay quiet. If you don’t, you are going to be sent home, and you’re not going to have a refund of your ticket price,” Lely High School Principal Ryan Nemeth told students.

“The Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that public schools may not constitutionally force students to salute the flag,” Lee Rowland, a First Amendment attorney who works with the ACLU, told The Intercept. “That ruling is crystal clear about a student’s right not to be compelled into patriotism by their government, and it is over 70 years old.”

The ruling that Rowland references came after many Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States began to refuse to salute the flag in solidarity with their brethren in Nazi Germany who were being arrested for refusing to salute that country’s fascist flag.

The action by the American Jehovah’s Witnesses provoked a backlash, and a number of followers of the faith were persecuted for refusing to salute. In West Virginia, a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses brought suit after their children were sanctioned for doing so.

The court ruled in favor of the family. In his opinion, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote, “Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.”

Notwithstanding this history, students exercising their right are now being challenged.

In Worcester, Massachusetts, a high school football player was told that he would be forced to sit out a game for kneeling during the national anthem — since then, his suspension was terminated.

“I’m standing up for the injustice that happens to black people every day, not just cops killing black people. We are disrespected and mistreated everywhere we go on a daily basis because of our skin color and I’m sick of it,” Mike Oppong, a junior at Doherty Memorial High School, told a reporter.

A student at Lower Lake High School in Lower Lake, California, Leilani Thomas, was punished for the first time since she first began sitting out the Pledge of Allegiance in second grade.

Thomas, a member of the Native American Pomo Tribe, is protesting the United States’ systematic abuse of native peoples. After a teacher lowered her grade for sitting, the school moved Thomas to a class with a different teacher.

“[The teacher] told me I was being disrespectful and I was pretty mad,” Leilani told ABC 10. “She was being disrespectful to me also, saying I was making bad choices, and I don’t have the choice to sit during the pledge.”

Students at private schools do not enjoy the same constitutional protections.  The Diocese in Camden, New Jersey, which oversees six local private Catholic schools, will punish student athletes who do not stand during the national anthem by suspending them for two games. In a letter, the organization wrote, “The best approach is helping our young people understand that blood was sacrificed so that we all can enjoy the gifts of our faith and our country. However, let me be clear. We are not public institutions and free speech in all of its demonstrations, including protests is not a guaranteed right.”

At least one student at a public school, Shemar Cooper, was grabbed by his teacher when he sat during the Pledge of Allegiance. Cooper, a 15-year-old student at Eisenhower High School in Blue Island, Illinois, said that a teacher tried to pull him out of his seat during the pledge.

“America doesn’t respect blacks,” he told WGN News. “Until they stop killing us, I’m not going to stand up.” The teacher has since been punished.

Some students, like Kaepernick himself, have received death threats. Eleven-year-old Jaelun Parkerson of Beaumont, Texas, received threats after he led his football team in kneeling during the national anthem. “It just makes me sad and scared,” he told ABC13.

Local police and the NAACP are investigating lynching threats in Brunswick, Ohio, where a high school football player named Rodney Axon Jr. was targeted after kneeling during the national anthem, according to Fox 8.Students Are Pulling a Kaepernick All Over America — and Being Threatened for It:

Parent dives into Jefferson County transgender saga, helps create new school policy - stltoday com

Parent dives into Jefferson County transgender saga, helps create new school policy | Metro | stltoday.com:

Parent dives into Jefferson County transgender saga, helps create new school policy

Parent dives into Jefferson County transgender saga, helps create new school policy | Metro | stltoday.com:

HILLSBORO • Derrick Good carries the aura of a fixer. At lunch the other day at the Courthouse Grill, he knew everybody who walked through the door. His waitress even hit him up for legal advice.

Good, 42, is a small-town lawyer who is involved in a lot of things. Charities. Baptist church. Republican politics, where he tends to work quietly behind the scenes.

One year ago, he dove into the transgender arena after parents, the school district and reporters rushed in for help and public comment on an emotional issue.

Hillsboro High School senior Lila Perry had shot up a flare from the rural hills of Jefferson County that was seen across the country and beyond. Perry, who was born male but identified as female, was telling news reporters that she would no longer settle for a unisex faculty restroom made especially for her.

“I am a girl,” Perry, dressed in a skirt and long wig, said then. “I am not going to be pushed away to another bathroom.”

All of a sudden, the school district, which has about 3,500 students, had an enormous situation on its hands. Students walked out. Some in support of Perry, others not. Some parents were caught off guard. Calls and emails backed up from all over.

In the mix, three of seven school board members resigned. Good was tapped as an emergency replacement. He would go on to help develop a formal policy on how the school district would handle transgender students even though the law is still unclear.

Foremost, Good said he’s the father of two children, ages 14 and 9, in the district. But he became a spokesman for other parents like him who had serious concerns about a student with a penis using their daughters’ restroom without warning.

• Where the bathroom directive stands nationwide

Good gave multiple interviews to media outlets, anything from conservative talk radio to the Today Show.

“We don’t need freshmen girls showing up on the first day of school with a biological male in the dressing room with them when their parents or they have no idea it could happen,” Good said. “That doesn’t make any sense to me. Kids do better when there are rules, and there were no rules.”

And there were no easy answers.

“These kids grew up with this guy as a guy who now all of a sudden says: ‘I am a girl,’” Good said. “I would get crucified for saying it that way publicly, but I don’t know how else to look at it. That’s the circumstance.”

Parents such as Good were on edge. As the transgender issue becomes more publicized, it forces parents to have tough conversations with their children before they are ready to do so. They question where parental rights end in dealing with juveniles.

• Questions and answers about gender identity

And while the rights of one child could be championed, they feel it could trample the rights of others.

“What about the physical privacy of the girls who know where they are at?” Good said. “Why does somebody else get to cross the line and force them into a situation that they don’t want to be in?”

School districts around the state typically deal with transgender quietly, on a case-by-case basis. Perry, and her willingness to go public, changed the narrative in Hillsboro.

Good and others felt that they needed to craft a policy. They were largely on their own.

President Barack Obama’s administration has said the failure to allow transgender students use of the bathroom, locker room or name associated with their gender identity amounts to discrimination based on sex. The guidelines are being challenged. The Supreme Court has yet to take a position on transgender in schools.

The Missouri School Boards Association offered Hillsboro twostarkly different model policies: one that follows federal guidelines and one that does not. The association doesn’t recommend either because the law isn’t defined.

Regardless, Good said he wanted a policy that Hillsboro and other school districts could adopt.

“Every school district is dealing with it, whether you hear about it or not,” he said.

Over the summer, Hillsboro finalized two policies.

“Anyone who desires greater privacy” can request alternative accommodations so long as the restroom or dressing area doesn’t include that of the opposite sex. Students are allowed one written request for name and associated gender-pronoun change per school year with the support of their parents.

The word “transgender” is not mentioned in the policies.

“Why am I going to make a policy aimed at one particular group of kids?” Good said. “Isn’t that the definition of an equal-protection problem or discrimination problem? I am not going to make a Baptist-student policy or a Catholic-student policy. Let’s make a facilities-use policy. This applies to all of our kids, not just one.”

Regarding special accommodations, Good said: “Whatever your issue is, we’ve now come up with a rule that says we are here to protect you and make you successful. In my mind that’s what we did. Who is to say there is a right and wrong? What we did is very fair.”

He said transgender decisions should be made after graduation.

“When people are adults and they have made decisions and there are surgeries available and physical change, that’s different than when you are still in high school,” he said.

As his temporary position on the school board came to a close, Good ran for a permanent seat. He said he lost by eight votes.

“I am OK with it,” he said. “I really felt like we accomplished what I felt I needed to accomplish.”

And new duties arise. He was recently appointed president of the Jefferson County Port Authority. He’s still involved with transgender issues as an attorney affiliated with Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based organization that weighs in across the country.

Though Lila Perry graduated, the superintendent of schools said there are several transgender students in Jefferson County.

So far this school year, two Hillsboro students requested name and gender pronoun changes. No one asked for alternative restroom or dressing accommodations.

• Read more: As Mazy grows up, her parents toggle between supporter and protector

• Listen: Reporters discuss their work on the “Inside the Post-Dispatch” podcast

Parent dives into Jefferson County transgender saga, helps create new school policy | Metro | stltoday.com:

A closer look at what it means to be transgender

Reporters Doug Moore and Blythe Bernhard talk about a package of stories running in the Sunday, Sept. 25, issue of the Post-Dispatch that cove…

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Where the bathroom directive stands

Glossary of terms

As Mazy grows up, her parents toggle between supporter and protector

Parent dives into Jefferson County transgender saga, helps create new school policy

Aisha Sultan: Pokemon Go away? Don't jump to conclusions.

Prop. 55 asks voters to extend governor’s income tax on wealthy - San Francisco Chronicle

Prop. 55 asks voters to extend governor’s income tax on wealthy - San Francisco Chronicle:

Prop. 55 asks voters to extend governor’s income tax on wealthy

SACRAMENTO — When Californians were asked four years ago whether wealthy people in the state should pay higher income taxes to prevent deep cuts to education and other public programs, opponents built a substantial war chest to fight the measure.

More than $53 million poured in from businesses and wealthy donors to fight Proposition 30 or to support a competing ballot measure to raise taxes across the board, not just on the highest earners.

Still, voters approved Prop. 30, which Gov. Jerry Brown sold as a temporary fix to the state’s fiscal crisis. The measure raised sales taxes by one-quarter cent and increased the income tax on single earners making $250,000 or more and couples making $500,000 or more. The sales tax expires at the end of this year, and the income tax expires in 2018.

Now, a November ballot measure, Proposition 55, asks voters to extend part of Prop. 30 — the income tax on the wealthy — for 12 years. The sales tax would not be extended under the measure.

Brown has refused to take a public position on the measure, which was placed on the ballot by education unions and health care groups.

This time, if opponents are spending money to fight Prop. 55, it’s not much.

“They have bigger fish to fry,” said Steve Maviglio, a Democratic strategist who is not involved with Prop. 55. “They are focusing on legislative races.”

Not a dime has been reported to the secretary of state from opponents. Fundraising laws require spending to be reported to the state when it exceeds $2,000. Several Sacramento power players — including the California Chamber of Commerce and Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — oppose the tax extension, but aren’t raising money to defeat it.

Supporters, meanwhile, have raised $46 million, primarily from unions representing hospital and school employees. Among the supporters are the California Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, Service Employees International Union and California Teachers Association.

“It wasn’t too long ago that we lived through one of the greatest recessions since the Depression, and during that period the brunt of it was bore by schools,” said CTA President Eric Heins. “I think every community felt the impact of that. ... I don’t think anyone wants to go back to that period.”

The cuts to education forced districts to lay off teachers and counselors while the state slashed social services amid years of multibillion-dollar budget deficits. Since Prop. 30 was approved in 2012, the measure has generated $31.2 billion, according to the state Controller’s Office.

This year’s measure, Prop. 55, is expected to raise $4 billion to $9 billion each year for the state, with half going to K-12 schools and community colleges and the rest going to the state’s general fund, budget reserves, debt repayment and Medi-Cal.

The California Association of Hospitals and Health Systems has provided more than half of supporters’ campaign cash for a total of $25 million, while CTA has given almost $16 million.

For hospitals, the incentive to support the initiative is clear. Prop. 55 includes up to $2 billion a year for the state’s Medi-Cal program, which covers more than 13 million low-income people and their families across the state.

For districts, like Mount Diablo Unified School District in Concord, where almost a quarter of the district’s 32,000 students do not speak English as their first language, the loss of Prop. 30 would mean $40 million less a year of much-needed money beginning in 2018-19, said Superintendent Nellie Meyer.

That could mean cutting after-school and enrichment programs or laying off teachers, Meyer said.

“The money is so embedded in our budget that we would be looking at cuts,” she said.

At the same time the Prop. 30 money could go away, Meyer said, school districts will be required to pick up more of its teacher pension costs. Brown created a 30-year plan to shore up the state’s teacher retirement system in 2014, in part by requiring teachers and school districts to contribute more to the pension fund.

“If those converge, then it would be detrimental to our district programs,” Meyer said.

David Kersten, an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, said the tax extension would fund the increased costs to districts for teacher pensions and benefits, which he said runs counter to the message promoted by supporters of Prop. 55: that the money will go into classrooms.

“If we were able to tell the story of this being the case, people would vote it down,” said Kersten, founder of the Kersten Institute for Governance and Public Policy. “But on its face, people say: ‘More money for education? Sure, let’s go.’”

He said he formed a small volunteer-only campaign to help fight Prop. 55 when he realized no one else was taking the lead.

Kersten said he’s hoping to raise $30,000 to $50,000 to cover the basic expenses of an opposition campaign as the Nov. 8 election approaches.

“I’m reaching out to key donor lists to see if I can shake something free, and no luck yet,” he said.

Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said small business owners are still considering a late run at an opposition campaign in the remaining six weeks before the election. Coupal said his group, however, is holding on to its checkbook until the 2018 election, when it expects to fight an effort to overhaul the state’s property tax law known as Prop. 13.

“I’m not sure it will take a funded campaign to defeat Prop. 55,” Coupal said. Prop. 30 “was promised to be temporary during a financial emergency, and we are through the fiscal emergency.”

Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Prop. 55 asks voters to extend governor’s income tax on wealthy - San Francisco Chronicle:Email: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.comTwitter: @MelodyGutierrez