Budget Update
September 23, 2009
Teri Burns – School Innovations & Advocacy

The Legislature has finally gone home for the year – more or less!  We will still have hearings of the Education Committees throughout the Fall to discuss the Governor’s proposed reforms to qualify California for federal Race To The Top funds.  Those proposals are embodied in SBx5 1 (Romero) and include proposals that will be of interest to CAG regarding linking student performance data directly to teachers for evaluations.  SB 19 (Simitian) is now on the Governor’s desk for signature that does only that part, but SBx5 1 contains other provision as well.
 
The Legislature has held firm on all attempts to weaken the categorical flexibility that they put in place with the recent budget.  Sentiment among all staff is that they want to see at least one year of operation under this proposal before they even consider pulling any programs out.  They want real data on what schools are doing about serving all of the targeted populations with flexible funds.  We will be looking for information from CAG and CDE about what districts are doing to continue service for gifted students.
 
The budget scenario continues to look grim for this year and next.  Tax revenues are coming in weaker than projected and another $5 billion shortfall is now projected for next year’s budget.  This may or may not mean more cuts for education.  Our saving grace is the need to maintain a minimum ‘maintenance of effort’ funding for education to receive most federal funds.  More likely is another deferral of payments from the state, forcing on districts the need to borrow operating funds and pay interest thereon.
 
We continue to work with Senator Steinberg and Assemblywoman Huber on linking gifted kids to the dropout issue.  I testified on behalf of CAG at the first of Huber’s hearings on the Drop-out problem early this month and am working with her staff to highlight the needs of gifted children specifically and at length at a future hearing.
 
There is also some interest on behalf of some in the CTE community for linking up with CAG to push for more applied learning courses.  We are exploring their intentions there before sending that through committees for review.
 
Currently the Governor has several hundred bills on his desk to sign or veto by October 11th.  Most are relatively narrow and technical in nature.  I anticipate next year’s continued limited resources will dictate similarly few substantive measures introduced.
 
AB 8 (Brownley) establishing an education finance working group to completely review and recommend changes to the school funding system is among those he is considering.  CAG will certainly want to be involved in those efforts if and when the group convenes.
 
We will continue to pursue SB 100 (Correa) as a talking point about gifted education in the year ahead, but the budget and school funding in general will again be the key focus on everyone’s mind when the Governor’s January Budget comes out at the start of the year.