Californians should do the right thing and vote yes on Proposition 30 this November 6. The passage of Proposition 30 will not only staunch the disastrous litany of cuts to education and public services, but will also finally enable the state to balance its budget. Go to the complete official explanation of Prop 30 on the Secretary of State's website here.
If Proposition 30 does not pass the state will be forced to cut an additional $6 billion from education next year. That's on top of $20 billion in cuts over the past three years. The cuts would include $500 million to the University of California, $750 million to the California State University system, $300 million to the community colleges and $4.5 billion to k-12 schools. We have already laid off 30,000 teachers in the state, with the resulting increase in class sizes, and losses in such classes as languages, the arts and vocational offerings. On the Community College level alone it has meant the denial of access to college for 485,000 students per year.
Proposition 30 would forestall these added blows to our childrens' education at a surprisingly modest cost. Prop 30 would increase the sales tax by 1/4 of a percent for four years. That is the total impact 99% of Californians would see on the revenue side. A $100 pair of shoes would cost 25 cents more. A fancy $1000 hi def flat screen TV would cost an extra $2.50. Even a nice $20,000 new car would only cost an extra 50 bucks. Most people wouldn't even notice. For people at the highest income levels, an additional 1% income tax would be assessed for joint filers making $500,000 to $600,000, 2% for those making $600,000 to $1 million, and 3% on incomes over $1 million. In other words, an adjusted income after deductions of half a mill would pay an extra $5,000 a year. These levies would expire in 7 years.
We can continue providing our children less and less education while our international competitors, particularly in China and India, ramp theirs up. We can continue turning away hundreds of thousands of young men and women from the college degrees that will give them an opportunity for a middle class standard of living. Or we can, for a very modest cost, address these crucial needs and balance our state budget at the same time. The choice is clear and obvious. Vote yes on Proposition 30.
2 comments:
The school budget fiasco seems to me to be the biggest distraction for real effective education reform.
I think it's a myth that more money = better education my father is living proof since he was educated in Mexico where they spend much less per pupil and can do higher math and understand several subjects much better than American grads.
Fortunately I speak a second language and had the chance to visit my family in Mexico where I took the interest in what my cousins were learning in school, my 11 yr old cousins had already learned every nation and capital in the Americas and would be doing higher level algebra than I was doing by college.
My mother even pressured my school to give me more homework since the idea of students coming back to school without homework is alien to her.
America spends more money per pupil than most if all industrial nations in the world, and yet I've yet to find a foreigner who didn't think our system was a complete failure. I've experienced this first hand and the writings of my fellow senior English class in High School were so bad I thought it was a joke at first. My brother took an AP History class and had a student not know which side won the civil war!
In other words were only feeding a system that does not do its job and a very expensive one at that. Sure it will hurt in the moment but denying them more and more tax payer money is the only way we can pressure a system that sets its own standards but still can't manage to reach it.
See Thomas Sowell on education on youtube
Thanks for your comment. I like your point that greater rigor should be taking place in our schools. But I would hope you could also see some merit in my point. Having cut $15 billion from our education system and denied hundreds of thousands of students access already, another six or seven billion dollar cut will do no good, but make things worse.
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