Arianna Brown
October 9, 2012
English 2
Op-Ed: Proposition 30
On November 6, 2012, a very important Proposition will appear
on this year’s California electoral ballot; Proposition 30 will be a monumental
landmark in determining the future of what California’s public education system
will become or will continue to be. This coming fiscal year, the state budget
will have to begin making either a continual $6 billion dollar cut that will
initiate the balancing of the state budget, or it will have to generate that
same amount through the increase of tax revenues. The current proposal for
these revenues that is being made by Governor Jerry Brown, is to instigate new tax
increases that would take effect almost immediately. The tax increases would
include raising sales tax by a quarter percent for the next four years, until
the end of the 2015-16 fiscal year, and raising the personal income tax of people
who earn over $250,000, annually, for the next seven years, until the end of
the fiscal year 2018-19(Attorney General of CA). Combined, the public and
higher education programs of California make over half of the state’s budget,
so it would, inevitably, be the first system to see a decrease in funding, and
at that, it would also be the system that would see the greatest decrease,
hence making it absolutely necessary for voters to come together this election
day and vote yes on Proposition 30 to save California’s educational system.
In the Attorney
General summary of Proposition 30, the general spending reductions for 2012-13 state
that, if voters reject Prop 30 the cuts to be made will be as follows (in
millions): schools and community colleges will receive a $5, 354 cut, UC’s a
$250 cut, and CSU’s a $250 cut. With these sorts of cuts, public education,
K-14, would be forced to make compensations for lack of funding by the state,
which is about 60% of what makes up for the budget for community colleges.
These compensations would come in the form of acts such as shortening the
instructional school year, reducing the number of staff employed at educational
facilities, and reducing enrollment. Actions such as these have already taken
place in the San Francisco school district, K-12 public schools have already
suffered a $500 decrease per student per year with the past 5 years, and without
the passing of $6 billion revenue generating Prop 30, they will have to cut 10
days of their 2013-14 instructional school year and, inevitably, much more in
the years to come(Garofoli). With these kinds of reductions the amount of
attention received by each child will decrease, opportunities for asking questions
and receiving the necessary amount of help will, most definitely, deteriorate;
the children who already struggle in school, and who’s families don’t have the
means of giving them an alternate education, or the appropriate kind of help
they need to succeed, will fall behind the scenes, and go unattended to. They
will be unable to get what they need to move up in the world and know what it
means to be well educated and to possess a to understand what it means to be an
effective, participatory member of society, able to obtain a fulfilling and
satisfying career and lifestyle. In a system with minimal services, it will be
the child who is deprived the most that will continue to be deprived; they will
be the ones who find it the most difficult to break the cycle of poverty and will
never know what it means to have the power of enlightenment.
Mr. Lowenthal, a former professor at CSU Long Beach, stated that, “… he too
longs for the days when the quality and affordability of California’s public
colleges helped make our state ‘the West Coast version of Ellis Island’…” and
he stated that, “We don’t have unlimited resources…That paradigm is gone”
(Blumenstyk). When someone with this much insider knowledge of our educational
system states that our schools are facing a time of crisis, it would be foolish
not to take his opinion with the utmost amount of gravity and severe amount of
importance. The opposition would argue that government is not to be fully
trusted with more revenues of any sort, due to its poor spending within recent
years; spendings such as the funding of things like the $68 billion bullet
train that’s started being built, of which only $13 billion dollars of its
funding identified, and also spending like that of the $54 million dollars that
was held onto by the state parks, system while in the face of many of their
sites being shuttered (Skelton). The opposition to Proposition 30 would also
argue that is selective and unfair for the government to raise income taxes,
strictly the rich, and that doing so would be a form of segregation, preaching
that old as time argument that the rich should not be punished for their
success and, potentially, hard work. For those who are better-off and have
benefited the most from California educational system, it would be in their
best interest, and, hopefully, their better nature, to give something back to
the future of California, and to help provide that that has clearly helped
provide for them in such an abundant way. Likewise, it would be a silly
prospect to sacrifice our educational system under the pretense that the public
has not been copiously satisfied with what the government has spent some of
state revenues on in the past and therefore use that as a reason to disregard
Prop 30 and the non-relating benefits it will provide. Although both of the
opposing arguments made have definite elements of truth to them, but, as Mr. Lowenthall
stated, we’ve moved past the time in which we have the choice to not take
action to save the best resource we have to offer our children because the
reality is that the state of California, like the majority of the United
States, is in a severe economic crunch.
As
a student of the California public educational system, I know firsthand that the
schooling I partook in during my K-12 experience could’ve been far more
interactive, and could have done a lot more outreach to children who had a hard
time with getting distracted and staying motivated, such as I did. Being an older
sister of both a child who’s attending public high school and is excelling
incredibly, and of another who’s finding hard to find any motivation whatsoever
to do well and succeed, I am given a very clear view as to how it’s success and
prestige in the class room that’s acknowledged most, and how it’s the children
who are considered “failures”, that is in an academic and social outlook, who
are the most unacknowledged, and, instead of being acknowledged and offered
assistance, are left to remain as “failures” before being given any appropriate
help to succeed. In my youngest brother’s case, it is the proactivity and
knowledgeability of my mother that has kept him from going unnoticed by in his
academia and by his schools, which would have otherwise let him remain unacknowledged
while putting him through the system without helping him find a way to become
truly successful so he can get by in real society and in life. My brother
turned out to be very lucky in that he was fortunate enough to have a mother
who works in county jobs that allowed her access to programs offered within the
school districts where we lived that she could use for his success, but his situation
makes me realize that for children whose parents don’t have as much direct
access to the recourses my mother does, it would be very difficult for that
child to obtain the help that my mother is providing for my brother. With the
potential loss of so much educational funding and backing it would be the
children like these that would be left almost hopeless to receiving the resources
they’d need to obtain a better education and better life.
California
is no longer a state that possesses the liberty to debate whether it’s right or
wrong to exclusively tax the rich, or whether the state has done a good enough
job with previous spending in the face of the future election and Proposition
30. Gov. Jerry Brown, states, “This is not about any other issue. It’s not
about the environment, it’s not about pensions, it’s not about parks. It’s
about one simple question: Shall those who’ve been blessed beyond imagination
give back 1 or 2 or 3 percent for the next seven years, or shall we take
billions out of our schools and colleges to the detriment of the kids.”
(Skelton) Gov. Jerry Brown realizes we can only ask ourselves if it’s really
come to that time in which the direction that California and its citizens choose
to take at this fork in the road is either the one in which we abandon our
values, and stop ensuring each child in California as much opportunity as we possibly
can, to move away from a life of poverty that they were potentially born into,
or to take the direction in which we let that opportunity demise. He realizes
that we are confronted with the opportunity to either save the future of
California’s schools and the futures of the children who attend them, or to let
them go short funded, forcing them to demise in such a way that they would not
be able to provide full opportunities and benefits that an education can
provide to our children the future of our state of California.
Work Cited
Blumenstyk, Goldie. "If Prop 30
Fails, Then What?" Editorial. The Chronicle of Higher Education [Washington
D.C.] 17 Aug. 2012: 31. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Sept.
2012.
<http://0-web.ebscohost.com.library.cabrillo.edu/ehost/detail?sid=9210a729-1f3f-4358-9578-471c5b7fd39c%40sessionmgr15&vid=5&hid=11&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWNvb2tpZSxpcCx1cmwmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#db=a9h&AN=78857634>.
Garofoli, Joe. "Teacher Contract Tied to Tax Measure."
Editorial. The San Fransisco Chronicle [San Fransisco] 3 Aug.
2012: PC1. Newspaper Source Plus. Web. 23 Sept. 2012.
<http://0-web.ebscohost.com.library.cabrillo.edu/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=11&sid=072ac2eb-b458-457d-a5c8-e1255104a2b2%40sessionmgr14&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWNvb2tpZSxpcCx1cmwmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#db=n5h&AN=78248093>.
Skelton, George. "Taxes Just Part of Picture; Voter Perceptions and
Pensions Also Tie into Brown's Push for Prop. 30." Editorial. Los
AngelesTimes [Los Angeles] 30 Aug. 2012: A.2. ProQuest
Newspapers. Web. 23 Sept. 2012. <http://http://0-search.proquest.com.library.cabrillo.edu/nationalnewscore/docview/1036835499/1391857C40328DE6F49/9?accountid=39584>.
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