From Swords to Togetherness

Gov. George Deukmejian and state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, long at swords’ points over the financing and pace of education reform, had lunch together last week and started making peace. It’s one of the most hopeful signs from Sacramento in months, and we encourage the continuation of this educational detente at a critical session today.

By all accounts, both gentlemen were just that--poring over the education agenda together looking for areas on which they could agree. Honig, who had called the governor’s last education budget for the public schools a “disaster,” promised to use “other nouns and adjectives” to describe the next one. Deukmejian, who had responded to Honig’s earlier outburst by calling the superintendent a “snake-oil salesman,” told him at lunch that the budget fight is history and that it’s time to move forward.

Deukmejian’s office views the meeting as a continuation of his normal process of consulting other top elected officials in the state, not as a summit meeting or a negotiating session. Honig sees the meeting as his chance to forge an alliance with the other key player in Sacramento in terms of mobilizing the forces for education reform. “If we get together on an issue, there’s no stopping us,” Honig said. “It will be an unassailable partnership.”

Every parent, every principal and every teacher in the state can only applaud this new cordiality and civility. It will be tested today when Honig meets with some of the governor’s staff members to talk about the 10% cuts imposed by the governor on the budget for Honig’s own department. Cuts in state aid for education also force some cuts in federal aid, but perhaps some of that double whammy could be avoided if the negotiators were prepared to restore some of the money in order to keep the peace.

Important as the state school department’s budget is, it is far more important to sustain the dialogue now that it has been reopened. The next budget process actually will begin this fall, and it is imperative that the governor and the superintendent still be speaking to each other when those numbers are drawn up.

California faces a long list of changes in the way teachers learn their jobs, the role of good schools in helping other schools to get better, the power of principals to root out bad teachers or to work toward improvement with those who will do the work, and the search for ways to encourage students to discover the magic of learning that will make them want to stay in school.

We’d like to see Deukmejian and Honig leading this effort--together.