Learning Matters: Recent trip to Sacramento brings back memories
I attended an adult education summit in Sacramento last week, my first trip there since I left the school board two and a half years ago.
Walking around Capitol Park, shaded by trees whose magnificence I’d previously failed to appreciate, I began thinking about the issues that have come and gone in all the years those trees have been growing.
I tried to remember all my trips to the capital since the summer of 1988, when my family stopped off in Sacramento on a trip to the Pacific Northwest. Public education from a parent perspective was new to me then.
The first “official” visit I recall was at the Capitol steps in 1997, standing in a crowd of PTA members from across the state for a photo commemorating PTA’s 100th anniversary. Years later, I saw that photo in the state PTA office, shortly before the office moved from downtown Los Angeles to Sacramento, and I think I’ve seen a copy of it in the Capital building, too.
I know I’m in the crowd, though I haven’t found myself in the picture. I was just one of the many before and since who have come to Sacramento in hopes of making a difference.
From my lingering memories and written notes of past trips, I’ve counted 20 Sacramento visits on behalf of PTA or the school board from 1997 to 2013. But the details are sketchy. I recall people and scenes — like the PTA photo — more than particular issues. But a few themes emerge alongside the visual impressions, issues that never seem to fade from view.
The 1997 PTA anniversary year was the first time I visited legislators’ offices and saw the state Senate in action. I’m pretty sure we said hello to Adam Schiff on that trip — either then or the next year, when several of us from Glendale attended PTA’s legislation conference.
I remember a group exercise in building a mock budget to help us understand the peculiarities of California school finance and some of the reasons schools were in another budgetary “down” phase. All of these years later, in his 15th year in Congress, Schiff continues to put his state experience to work as he wrestles with the challenges of the federal budget. It’s a toss-up which budget is more unwieldy or less predictable.
Seeking some educational perspective beyond my own, I called Jeff Frost, convener of the Five Star Coalition of local school boards and the California Assn. of Suburban School Districts, in both of which Glendale participates. Frost has worked in the education arena in Sacramento since 1987, and I’ve appreciated his nonpartisan, matter-of-fact manner since attending my first CALSSD meeting a decade ago.
“The common theme of the last 15 to 20 years is the [lack of] stability in public education. There’s always a new crisis, always a funding problem, and the only ‘guarantee’ in Proposition 98 is that you can’t count on it,” he said, referring to the 1988 ballot initiative that was meant to guarantee a minimum funding floor for education.
The unpredictable budget theme was evident last week, as school and community college districts, together with Workforce Development Boards, discussed the best ways to spend the career education money presently available, in ways that can be sustained when the money disappears again.
Another recurring Sacramento theme has been health and safety, mentioned in a speech last week by Michael Funk, the after-school director for Department of Education. His reference to the high percent of crime involving young people in the after-school hours called to mind a 1999 PTA convention presentation, where a discussion of after-school programs turned to the subject of gun safety and trigger locks.
I remember the collective gasp among the assembled parents that year when the speaker described the finger-strength needed to pull a trigger. He explained how very young children were apt to use their thumbs to push the trigger because their index fingers aren’t strong enough to pull, resulting in a tendency to turn the gun barrels toward their face.
Guns are still too readily available, and unattended youth all too frequently have access to prescription drugs in unlocked medicine cabinets, more prevalent and often as dangerous as guns.
I’m comforted to know that my former school board colleague Mary Boger shares Sacramento memories like mine and remembered a few scenes and quotes.
From her new home in Massachusetts, she emailed me about the convention speaker whose “heart was in the public schools, and so were her kids,” and about hearing Elizabeth Glazer recount her founding of the Pediatric AIDS Foundation. She remembered, as do I, the PTA mom petrified on her first airplane flight, and “the constant refrain of learning GUSD was already doing the ‘new’ thing we’d just heard about.”
As long as our state exists, there will be issues in education addressed and at least somewhat improved by travelers to Sacramento. I hope they take note of the work of the Capitol Park groundskeepers, whose care for the trees has continued for more than 100 years.
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JOYLENE WAGNER is a past board member of the Glendale Unified school board. Email her at jkate4400@aol.com.
