Low-Cost, High-Quality Public Education Key to State’s Future

Recently, I addressed the Rancho Santiago College Board of Trustees to let them know in a public forum that without Santa Ana College and the football scholarship the college provided, my life would have been vastly different from what it has been.

These are difficult times for all of us here in California. We here in the Golden State face unprecedented challenges. Our economic infrastructure is unable to support the services needed by our teeming population. We face the difficult dilemma of determining which children will be the recipients of the sustenance we have. And all of the causes are worthy. I know, because I have spent most of my life as an advocate for many of them.

Most Californians are familiar with the story about the need to teach people to fish, rather than to give them fish, so that they can become self-sufficient, develop self-esteem and become contributors to our communities.

Community colleges prepare people to enter the work force, and community colleges give students an excellent foundation for transfer to four-year universities. (The chancellor at Rancho Santiago College recently informed me that, for yet another year, the Rancho Santiago College transfers to UC Irvine have a higher GPA than students who began their college education at UC Irvine and a higher GPA than the composite of all community college transfers.)

Inexpensive public education has been a tradition in California and has been a key factor in the success of the state. To dismantle public education is to destroy California.

ED ARNOLD

Fountain Valley

Ed Arnold is president of the Rancho Santiago College Foundation.

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I am writing to address a problem that I feel threatens the very existence of this state. Public education in California is dying.

I am a senior at Woodbridge High School, and I will be going out of state next year, probably for the rest of my life. So it’s not myself that I am worried about but my younger sister. When I went to elementary school, the average class size was 26 students. We had music instruction twice a week for one hour and science three times a week, also for an hour. Once a week we had art in the classroom. The media center/library was staffed full time by a media specialist and was open for our use at snack time and at lunch.

Things are different now. My sister has 36 students in her fifth-grade class. Music is still taught twice a week, but for only 40 minutes. Science has been cut from three days a week to two. Art is taught three times per year. The school no longer has a media specialist; each class may use the media center only once per week, and it is closed during lunch and recess and after school. There is talk of completely cutting both science and music next year.

Since Proposition 13, the school districts have had no new sources of funding. The California Lottery provides a paltry .5% of its income to education. This amounts to $17 per student per year, less than the cost of a textbook.

People will not vote to tax themselves unless they have a personal reason to do so. My own grandparents are guilty of this. They freely admit that they no longer care about education, and yet they want all of their grandchildren to go to universities.

We must find new ways to fund education in California. Luckily, there are lots of options available to us. Value-added taxes, increased sales taxes and reduced costs at the district level could all help enormously. Public education in California is fatally ill, and if it dies, I am afraid that the whole state will follow.

J.P. HUDSON

Irvine