rough draft.

Op-Ed: Proposition 30

            On November 6, 2012, a very important Proposition will be on this year’s California election ballot; Proposition 30 will be a monumental landmark in determining the future of what California’s public education system will become or continue to be. Come this fiscal year, the state budget will have to either begin making a continual $6 billion dollar cut to start the balancing of the state budget, or it will have to generate that same amount through tax revenue increases, the current proposal of which, by Governor Jerry Brown, is to initiate a tax increase that would take effect almost immediately. The tax increases would include the raising of sales tax by a quarter percent for the next four years until the end of the fiscal year 2015-16, 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. 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 see the greatest decrease.

            In the  Attorney General summary of Proposition 30, the general spending reductions for 2012-13 if voters reject Prop 30 are stated and are as follows (in millions): schools and community colleges will receive a $5, 354 cut, UC’s a $250 cut, and CSU’s, also, a $250 cut. With these sorts of cuts, public education, K-14, would be forced to compensate for lack of funding by the state, which makes up about 60% of the budgets for community colleges. These compensations would come in the form of acts such as shortening the instructional year for schools, reducing enrollment in community colleges, and increasing restrictions on attempting and repeating courses so as to reduce the overall demand on the community college system. Inevitably, with these kinds of reductions in our public schooling system along with things like reducing the number of staff employed at educational facilities, the quality in the education that the children will receive in their education will be reduced. The amount of attention received by each child will decrease, opportunities for asking more questions and receiving more help will, most definitely, deteriorate, and those kids, who struggle in school, and who’s families don’t have the means of giving them an alternate education, or who aren’t able to give them the right kind of help, will fall behind the scenes and will go unattended to, and therefore unable to get what they need to move up in the world and become a well educated and knowledgeable person in the world who understands what it means to be a member of society, and what it takes to earn a career. In a system with minimal services, it will be that child who is already deprived the most that will continue to be deprived and will find it most difficult to break the cycle of poverty and will never know what it means to have the power of a decent education.