Legislators Face Matters of Policy and Purse Strings : Costly Proposals Seek to Strengthen Public Schools, Community Colleges

When legislators return to work Monday, they will take up a series of ambitious and expensive proposals intended to shore up the public schools and chart new directions for the state’s community colleges.

For public schools, finding a way to recover some of the $170 million lost last month in Gov. George Deukmejian’s vetoes of school funding will dominate much of the final weeks of the legislative session, while community college supporters plan to press for passage of a $100-million bill to overhaul the financing, governance and faculty credential requirements of the 106-campus system.

Because of the vagaries of state politics and the governor’s iron grasp on the state’s purse strings, however, the prospect is remote that the schools or the colleges will wind up with the additional funding they are seeking.

“It’s really up to the Administration and what they want to do,” said state schools chief Bill Honig, who said his top priorities will be to fight to restore $86 million in urban school aid and $32 million in teacher training funds.

Recovering the urban school money appears to depend largely on the ability of Republican and Democratic legislators to agree on the best way to allocate it. The Los Angeles school district is particularly keen on trying to work out a compromise, however, because it lost the largest amount, $37 million. The funds would support district programs to teach students who are poor, low-achieving or speak little English and compensate districts for the higher costs associated with teaching such pupils.

The picture is brighter for saving a network of 17 teacher training centers around the state that face closing because Deukmejian eliminated their $13-million operating budget. The Los Angeles County center, which trained 39,000 teachers last year, was the largest of the 17.

Local districts relied on the centers to train their teachers in new methods of teaching basic academic subjects. They also developed guides on how to incorporate computers, calculators and video equipment into daily lessons on writing, social science and mathematics. Honig considers the centers an essential element of school reform because they are the major resource for local districts to keep teachers up to date on new curriculum standards and classroom technology.

Because of the outcry from constituents in her Silicon Valley district, Sen. Rebecca Morgan (R-Menlo Park) plans to amend an education bill she is carrying to reinstate the $13 million.

The major item concerning the state’s community colleges is a $100-million reform bill that has made slow progress through the Legislature. The bill, whose principal author is Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-San Jose), sets out in exacting detail expanded roles for the system’s Board of Governors and the statewide chancellor. It also proposes a process of peer review for granting tenure to community college faculty, as well as limits on the use of part-time instructors.

New Formula Missing

A major piece of the bill is still missing, however--a new formula for allocating funds to the colleges. The colleges now receive state dollars based on the size of their enrollment, a method that, college district officials contend, has resulted in inadequate funding because it failed to take into account the cost of critical services such as placement and counseling.

Brian Murphy, chief consultant to the joint legislative committee responsible for drawing up the reform bill, said the committee plans to meet this week to add a financing plan to it. The amendment will be drawn from a report recently completed by a state-appointed task force, but that report has encountered opposition from Deukmejian’s Department of Finance.

Though well received in the Legislature, the entire measure is opposed by the governor’s finance experts, chiefly on the grounds that it is too costly. Deukmejian has not said he will approve it, although he has indicated general satisfaction with the broad principles it lays out.

Fed Up

Statewide community college Chancellor Joshua Smith, who announced last week he was so fed up with bureaucratic wrangling over community college affairs that he will resign, has said he is doubtful that the issue of prime concern to him--the need to strengthen the authority of the Board of Governors and the chancellor--will be resolved this year. Smith announced last week that he was resigning, in large part because he was unable to “convince the Legislature of the necessity for change.”