Wilson Urges Cap on Schools’ Prop. 98 Funds

In a proposal that would turn voter-approved Proposition 98 on its head, Gov. Pete Wilson is urging lawmakers to make the constitutional amendment a ceiling for guaranteed school funding, as well as the floor it was intended to be.

As part of budget legislation made public Tuesday that spells out the governor’s agenda for education, Wilson also called for repealing limits on class size and shifting money out of community colleges to elementary and high schools.

Filling in the details of the spending plan that he announced last week, Wilson proposed a new measure that would automatically take back from the schools any money they receive beyond the Proposition 98 guarantee. This “overpayment” has occurred in the past two years when school funds were calculated based on economic projections that were not borne out because of the continuing recession.

“Fair is fair,” said Ray Reinhard, assistant secretary for child development and education in the Wilson Administration, noting that the state already is obligated to make good on the Proposition 98 guarantee if it inadvertently shorts the schools. “The issue for us is when, because of unintended circumstances (such as) the economy going in the toilet . . . the schools get more than they are guaranteed, should that money remain with the schools or should it be recaptured by the state?”

But state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig called this a “back-door gutting” of Proposition 98, the 1988 constitutional amendment that guarantees at least 40% of state general fund revenues to public schools and community colleges.

“When we argued for 98, we were way behind the rest of the country in school spending,” Honig said. “We said we needed a floor below which we could not fall and that floor was 98, but we didn’t say we would never argue for more money above the floor. Now they (the Wilson Administration) are turning this into a moral argument that we aren’t ever eligible to ask for more than the minimum.”

Honig said this was the “most dangerous” of a “lot of crackpot ideas” that Wilson has included in the new education legislation.

He predicted that the proposals were “deader than a doornail” in both the Senate and the Assembly.

The legislation would implement the plan Wilson announced last Friday to take $1.1 billion away from schools and colleges this year but at the same time lend them $732 million to accommodate enrollment growth. The schools would have to repay the loan, which Honig and others argue amounts to a permanent reduction in the funding base for education.

The bill also would more than triple community college fees, from $6 to $20 per academic unit, and would do away with a $200-per-semester fee ceiling that the Administration had been supporting.

And it would eliminate all state funding for community college students who already have earned four-year degrees or who have accumulated 90 units.

In addition, community colleges would receive only 9% of the Proposition 98 money, instead of 11% as they do now, a change that Joseph Newmyer, vice chancellor for administrative and fiscal policy in the 107-college system, said would cost the colleges about $335 million this fiscal year.

As a result of the proposals, Community Colleges Chancellor David Mertes advised all college presidents and superintendents Tuesday to reduce their budgets by 5% and not expect state funding for any students who already have 90 units.

The governor suggested that local community colleges charge 90-unit students an average of $90 per credit unit--almost as much as they would pay at a University of California campus.

Newmyer estimated that the tripling of fees for most students, plus the tenfold increase for the 90-unit students, would cause enrollment to drop about 200,000 this year.

The Wilson-backed legislation also would change the state education code to permit school districts to increase class sizes and to add more students to special education classes for physically or emotionally disturbed children. Current law, for example, limits class size in first through third grades to 32 students.

Secretary for Child Development and Education Maureen DiMarco said both moves would “provide local districts with the flexibility they need in tough budget times.”

The bill would cluster six special programs, including home-to-school transportation and special efforts for gifted and talented students, into a single block grant--another attempt, DiMarco said, to provide school districts with more flexibility in spending increasingly scarce funds.

She said this money must be spent on these six programs; it cannot be used for general salary increases or other purposes.

Wilson’s proposal to limit kindergarten enrollment is revived in the latest legislation, but for the 1993-94 school year, not for this fall.

One change would limit kindergarten to youngsters who have reached their fifth birthday by Sept. 1, not Dec. 1, as current law reads.

The bill also would require first graders to be 6 years old by Sept. 1, not Dec. 1.

DiMarco said this is “to keep parents from holding kids out of kindergarten (which is voluntary) and then trying to enroll them in first grade (which is mandatory) too early.”

But Honig said the result would be more than 100,000 youngsters “who have finished kindergarten and now have to wait a year to go to first grade. What are they supposed to do in the meantime?”

Another change would require schools to make sure students are present for at least four hours a day in order to claim state reimbursement. Currently, schools are required to check attendance once a day. The governor called for the attendance counting change in his original 1992-93 budget proposal last January--a move he said would save the state about $150 million--but dropped it two weeks ago.

Earlier Tuesday, leaders of the Education Coalition, the umbrella group fighting for education funding, said they accepted Wilson’s latest dollar offer for elementary and secondary schools, which would maintain about the same per-pupil spending as last year. They still oppose the method of lending the schools the money to be repaid next year.

However, said Del Weber, president of the California Teachers Assn., “we reject out of hand the $335-million cut for community colleges,” which he called “the educational system of last resort during a recession.”