Honig’s $1-Billion Plan to Continue Reforms in Schools Is Unveiled

Despite a continuing battle with Gov. George Deukmejian over cutbacks in education funding, state schools superintendent Bill Honig on Monday unveiled a broad legislative package costing nearly $1 billion that he said is needed to “keep the reform movement going” in California’s elementary and secondary schools.

Flanked by the legislative sponsors of the omnibus bill, Honig said at a Sacramento press conference that the state must continue to make a substantial investment in the public schools in order to maintain the progress that has been made since 1983, when the Legislature passed major reform legislation that stiffened graduation requirements, improved teaching conditions and increased instructional time.

The new legislation, Honig said, builds on the reforms of 1983. It calls for spending $300 million on improving teacher salaries, recruitment and training; upgrading textbooks and school libraries; reducing class size from kindergarten through high school, and doubling the financing for summer school.

In addition, the bill provides $600 million to restore programs cut by Deukmejian last year and make up for those that face money shortages in 1987-88 under the governor’s proposed budget. Included in this amount is money to continue several special programs for gifted, handicapped, minority and remedial students that the governor proposed phasing out in order to pay for his own class-size reduction effort in first, second and third grades.

Honig did not specifically address the biggest problem the legislation faces--where to find the money to pay for the improvements. Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-San Jose), co-author of the bill with Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), promised to present a financing plan within the next 10 days. Honig suggested that some money might be found in “sales tax loopholes.”

In a largely critical written statement released late in the day, Deukmejian focused on the fuzziness of the financing ideas offered by the legislation’s backers.

“I am not impressed with those who advance new ideas without identifying where the money would come from. . . . If new ideas are advanced to improve education, let’s hold some feet to the fire,” he said, “and insist that proponents spell out clearly how those ideas will be financed.”

Although Honig and Deukmejian have exchanged harsh words since Honig lashed out at the governor in January for proposing what the schools chief considered a sorely inadequate education budget, both Honig and Vasconcellos avoided criticizing the governor during the news conference. Honig said he has discussed the proposed reforms with the governor and hopes to work with him to find the money to pay for them.

Honig, who has called for a grass-roots campaign to convince the governor that more, not less, of the state’s new revenues should be devoted to education, hinted Monday that public support of the new legislation will be important. “Basically, if people in the state want things to happen, it will happen,” he said.

The schools chief said this “second wave” of reform legislation concentrates on programs that will bring “high payoffs” for years to come in terms of overall educational improvement.

The major portion of the bill focuses on a five-year effort to recruit and train high-quality teachers and hang onto them. Specifically, it will raise beginning salaries from an average of $21,000 to $25,000 annually, create a program to encourage minorities to enter teaching, and establish a new requirement for a one-year “teaching residency” for prospective teachers.

It also would establish 12 “teaching hospitals”--schools that would allow new teachers to learn by working under the guidance of exemplary instructors.

To further opportunities for more experienced teachers, the legislation calls for doubling the state mentor-teacher program to include 22,000 teachers. The mentor program, which was created in the 1983 reform bill, allows up to 5% of classroom teachers who are regarded by their peers as superior instructors to earn an additional $4,000 annually by sharing their skills with other teachers, particularly those new to the field.

Honig said that better teacher recruiting and training is critical because California needs 90,000 new teachers in the next five years.

Says Now Is Time

“This is the time to invest in those teachers--to give them good assessments, to make sure they’re qualified, to give them the support by mentor teachers when they come into the schools,” he said. “If we wait for three or four years because of the cost implications, we will lose this opportunity to . . . get the high payoff (because) they’ll all be in the system” by then.

Also proposed in the reform package is a program to reduce the statewide teacher-student ratio by 1992. In an annual survey of the states conducted by the National Education Assn., California generally runs neck and neck with Utah for the dubious distinction of having the largest classes in the nation. The bill would provide $162 million to elementary school districts to design their own programs to make classes smaller and $64 million to high schools to specifically reduce English, science, math and social science class sizes.

Elaine Woo reported from Los Angeles and Tillie Fong from Sacramento.