Governor Credited With Strong Education Record

Gov. George Deukmejian has poured more new money into public schools and colleges than any California governor in nearly 20 years, reversing the long slide of the 1970s and putting public education back on a road toward reform and renewal.

However, the governor resisted nearly all of the education proposals when they first surfaced in the Legislature, vetoed a series of school bills and offered no original ideas of his own.

Is this the record of “the greatest education governor in the history of this state,” as his staff describes him? Or is it the record of a “political realist,” as a teachers union leader labels him, a governor who saw a groundswell of public support for boosting education and who grudgingly went along with it?

Those who praise the governor’s education record, of whom there are many, say the budget numbers tell the tale.

In 1983, when Deukmejian took office, the state spent $11.13 billion for public schools, community colleges and state universities. Despite his veto in June of $283 million in state aid to public schools and community colleges, his fiscal 1987 budget calls for total expenditures of $16.98 billion, a 52% jump over four years.

Education’s share of the state general fund, which had fallen to 49.5% in the last year of the Administration of Edmund G. Brown Jr., has risen steadily to 55% in Deukmejian’s latest budget.

“No matter how you cut it, education has done very well under his Administration,” said Allan Odden, a USC education professor and a nationally known expert on school financing. “He clearly reversed the decline of the period just before he took office, and he’s funded major reforms in the system.”

Although Deukmejian does not get a lot of national publicity on education, “there are only a few other governors, two or three perhaps, with better education records than his,” Odden said, citing Bob Graham of Florida, Richard W. Riley of South Carolina and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.

Not surprisingly, University of California President David P. Gardner is one of Deukmejian’s biggest admirers.

Returning three years ago to UC after a decade as president of the University of Utah, Gardner says he found the state’s top public colleges in a “a state of disarray.” The renowned university system, he said, was losing top professors, failing to build needed facilities and letting its competitive edge in research slip away.

“To give you an idea of how far we had fallen, the state of Utah gave me more money over eight years to construct buildings on one campus there (in Salt Lake City) than the state of California had provided over the same period for the nine campuses of the University of California,” Gardner said.

To the rescue came Deukmejian, a former attorney general who had said little about education before taking office, other than that schools should be rid of drugs, vandalism and violence.

In the 1983-84 school year, state support for UC stood at $1.11 billion. Over three years, Deukmejian has raised that figure to $1.79 billion.

As a result of all this money, Gardner said, “the faculty and staff salaries are once again competitive” with the nation’s elite universities. Moreover, “we have substantially reduced the backlog of obsolete instructional equipment, and buildings are once again being built on all nine campuses,” he said. “I believe the governor is quite determined to secure the University of California as the leading public university in the United States.”

Higher Faculty Salaries

The 19-campus California State University system has done almost as well. Over the last three years, Deukmejian has lifted the CSU budget from $950 million to $1.36 billion, allowing the campuses to raise faculty salaries to a level slightly above comparable universities.

University students have benefited directly from the governor’s largess. Fees at UC and CSU doubled in a two-year period at the end of the Brown Administration, but Deukmejian lowered the amount by about $70 in 1984 and has frozen the fees since then. A typical UC student pays about $1,300 a year in fees, while a CSU student pays roughly $600.

But beyond the state universities, the critics of Deukmejian’s education record, of whom there are fewer, say he has been more of a follower than a leader. Many also charge that Deukmejian has ignored and under-funded California’s community colleges.

“If you ask who’s been out there leading the charge for education, it’s not been the governor. The leadership has come from (state school Supt.) Bill Honig and a few members of the Legislature,” says USC’s Odden.

State Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), who chairs the Senate Education Committee and co-sponsored the $800-million education reform law of 1983, notes that the governor opposed that bill until practically the moment he signed it into law.

‘Swept Along by Tide’

“Deukmejian was swept along by the tide in 1983,” said Hart, who for a time considered challenging Deukmejian this year. “Everyone got behind that bill--Democrats and Republicans, the Business Roundtable, the media, Bill Honig--and then he came along.”

The governor “deserves some credit for maintaining his commitment to fund the reforms” and “for taking some initiative” on behalf of the state universities, Hart said. But in most areas, he added, Deukmejian has been slow to act or has done nothing at all.

“Other than signing off on a dollar amount, he’s not gotten involved at all” in fashioning proposals for the schools and colleges, Hart said.

He cited three examples. Despite a consensus in Sacramento that the state badly needed to build new schools, Deukmejian vetoed a school construction bill last fall that would have provided up to $750 million a year for new schools. Questioning the high cost of the bill, the governor directed his staff to study the issue further, and this year he recommended passage of an $800-million state bond issue to build schools.

“Just to sit on this (issue) for another year or so borders on being irresponsible,” Hart said.

Two Measures Vetoed

The public schools in California have the largest classes of any state, according to data compiled by the National Education Assn. Hart has twice pushed through the Legislature bills that would have reduced class size in some English and math classes in the high schools, and on both occasions the governor vetoed the $60-million measures.

And despite the overall money increases the governor has approved, California still ranks in the bottom half of the nation in terms of the amount it spends on each public school student. The NEA ranked California 27th among states in 1984-85, the last year for which figures are available--only slightly better than its 1982-83 ranking of 30th.

On community colleges, Hart says Deukmejian “found a system in disarray and he’s not done anything to help.” Since many two-year college students seem to lack direction and relatively few transfer to state universities, college officials had sought state aid to set up expanded counseling and testing programs. Again, the Legislature passed such a program and Deukmejian vetoed it, Hart said.

The leaders of California’s teachers unions agree that Deukmejian has gotten too much credit for his record on education.

“He is a political realist. He’s gone along with the momentum to do something for public education,” said Marilyn Russell Bittle, past president of the 150,000-member California Teachers Assn.

“He has done what was necessary and nothing more,” she added. “The governor hasn’t had an agenda for improving public education. The initiative has come from the Legislature.”

Analysis Called Unfair

But Deukmejian and his advisers say such an analysis is unfair. It ignores, for example, the billion-dollar deficit Deukmejian inherited in 1983. In his first year, the governor resisted increases in spending, including education, because of the state’s financial condition. Since then, he has been quite generous to the schools and colleges, they say.

“This governor has made the greatest commitment for improving education funding of any governor in the history of this state,” said William Cunningham, Deukmejian’s education adviser. “I don’t understand why they (teachers union leaders) won’t acknowledge the commitment he’s made.”

State school Supt. Honig has mostly praise for Deukmejian.

“He’s got a good record on education. He made education his No. 1 budget priority, and he’s stuck to that,” said Honig, who clashed at times with the governor during 1983.

Difference Over Timing

“We had a difference of opinion about timing,” as Honig put it, meaning that he thought the governor should increase school funding in 1983 and Deukmejian wanted to wait until the overall budget picture improved.

“Since then, we’ve had a good working relationship,” Honig added.

The picture on community colleges is cloudier. Much disagreement turns on the huge enrollment decline in the two-year colleges.

For his part, Deukmejian says he has fully financed the Legislature’s 1983 college financing bill, in which state aid was tied to enrollment levels. He even added extra money for districts such as Los Angeles that were losing students. The result is that the budgets for California’s 106 junior colleges have increased, although not at the rate of the state universities. State aid for each community college student has risen 41% in the last four years.

In the 1982-83 budget, the state and local funding for the community colleges totaled $1.6 billion. The governor’s budget for 1986-87 calls for total aid of $1.859 billion. Over the same period, the number of full-time students fell from 728,856 in 1983 to an estimated 662,267 for 1987.

Blamed for Enrollment Dip

College officials say the budget figures look good mostly because there are fewer community college students now. In 1983, Deukmejian wanted students to pay a $100-per year fee for their education, and when Democratic leaders in the Legislature resisted, he withheld $108 million in state aid budgeted for community colleges. As a result, classes were cut and students began staying away in droves. In the view of many community college officials, Deukmejian is to blame for their enrollment loss.

“The governor has provided maintenance level budgets for us. He’s not given us enough to make changes or undertake new programs,” said California community college Chancellor Joshua Smith.

Private Criticisms

Privately, many community college officials and faculty members speak harshly of Deukmejian, saying the two-year schools have been shortchanged during this era of strong education financing. But some have toned down the rhetoric of late because, as one lobbyist put it, Deukmejian is “thin-skinned about any criticism.”

Smith, who took over as chancellor in 1985, finds himself more in agreement with the governor than most community college officials.

“I think he’s been after a clarified mission statement for the community colleges, and I find that justified,” Smith said. “I certainly don’t view him as an enemy of community colleges.”

In Sacramento, most education lobbyists, though pleasantly surprised at Deukmejian’s record during his first term, are wary of what will happen if he is reelected. By next year, both the public schools and the state universities will have “caught up” in some sense, either to a national average for spending or to a level comparable with what the state spent before Proposition 13 of 1978.

‘Real Test’ to Come

Although most do not want to be quoted, they question whether Deukmejian would continue to spend more to improve public education during a second term. Moreover, the surging enrollment in the public schools--an average of 100,000 new children per year--will cost the state budget about $300 million extra per year just to keep up.

“The real test will be what he supports in the next year or so,” said Stanford University education professor Michael Kirst.

Nevertheless, Kirst, who headed the California state Board of Education under Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., said Deukmejian has shown a willingness to spend large amounts of money when needed.

“He’s taken a ‘show me’ attitude: Show me the political support across the state and show me you have a program that is different from what we had before,” Kirst said. “When that’s happened, he’s been willing to commit large-scale funding.

“He hasn’t come up with a lot of bold new proposals,” Kirst added, “but he’s put together a pretty solid record.”

Times staff writer Elaine Woo contributed to this article.

EDUCATION SPENDING Deukmejian’s Record (In Billions of Dollars)

Category 1982-3* 1986-7 % Change Overall $11.13 $16.98 51.2% UC 1.11 1.79 61.2% Cal State .95 1.36 43.1% Comm. College 1.60 1.86 16.2% K-12 8.00 12.10 51.0%

RANKING AMONG 50 STATES (K-12)

Category 1982 1985 Class Size 49 50 Per Pupil Spending 30 27

* Last budget of Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. Appropriated figures, not fully spent.