Budget Battle Flares Over Bid to Cut Class Size

Partisan wrangling over Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposal to cut California’s class sizes escalated Monday, as the state entered the first day of the fiscal year without a spending plan.

Wilson wants to spend $678 million this year to reduce class sizes in the first, second and third grades from about 30 students to no more than 20, part of a broader campaign he has launched to shore up reading instruction in public schools statewide.

“The Republicans and I agree that this is the most important thing that can be done for education,” Wilson said at a Los Angeles news conference Monday. “We should brook no excuses or delays.”

The governor blamed Democrats’ opposition to his class size plan as the main reason for the failure to reach a budget accord. In particular, he singled out for criticism the California Teachers Assn., which has attacked his proposal as an inadequate solution to a serious problem.

“It’s very strange since the union spent $2 million asking for it [class size cuts] and now is giving excuses for not doing it,” Wilson said.

Sandra Jackson, a spokeswoman for the teachers organization, called Wilson’s criticisms ridiculous. “CTA is not standing in the way of a settlement of the budget proposal for California,” she said. “We are concerned about class size reduction.”

She said schools should have the flexibility to use the money to cut class size in the grades where they feel smaller classes will have the most impact.

This is the ninth time in 10 years that the state has missed the constitutional deadline for adopting a spending plan. Legislators on Monday said an agreement is likely to be several days away.

Wilson was returning to Sacramento for a Monday evening negotiating session with Assembly and Senate leaders. A Senate-Assembly conference committee on the budget also was meeting Monday.

Democrats long have urged class size reductions. But now that Wilson is pushing for it, they acknowledge that classes cannot be cut so dramatically in such a short time.

Critics of Wilson’s plan say the state would need 6,500 additional teachers per grade level to accommodate the new classes that would be created if each class was cut by 10 students. Last year, the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing certified only 5,000 new elementary school instructors.

Other objections have focused on the space crunch facing many of the state’s schools. Democratic legislators from Los Angeles point out that Los Angeles Unified campuses lack space for more classrooms, and many are already operating year-round.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin said Monday that if just 60% of the new classes created by the lowered student-teacher ratio were dependent on purchasing bungalows or other temporary classrooms, the capital cost would exceed $190 million per grade level.

“It’s not going to be easy,” said Carolyn Ellner, dean of the school of education at Cal State Northridge, who spoke with Wilson at his Los Angeles news conference. But Ellner said some schools could turn to other approaches that would not require buying portable classrooms, such as double sessions or other types of schedules that would enable them to make better use of limited classroom space.

Most of the education establishment has opposed Wilson’s proposal, and Monday several prominent groups were busy floating alternative plans.

The Education Coalition, an umbrella group representing organizations of teachers, administrators, board members and other school employees, issued a position paper urging the governor and lawmakers to consider increasing the amount of money the state will spend to make classes smaller.

The governor’s proposal offers $500 per student to schools that cut class sizes in all three grades for the entire instructional day. The Education Coalition said the per-pupil expenditure should be at least $800, an amount it says would cover many of the additional expenses the group says schools would incur if they try to reduce class size.

“The governor deserves credit for saying we should do something about class size,” said Kevin Gordon, director of government relations for the California School Boards Assn. “We want to help him do it right.”

Dan Edwards, a spokesman for the governor’s education office, did not disagree with the coalition’s estimate of the real costs of reducing class size. But he emphasized that the governor’s proposal is an incentive program and was “never couched as a way to pay for every element immediately. It is not a full-cost reimbursement to [a district] to go out and build a brand new school and put teachers in it and buy materials. It is an incentive to complement our reading initiative.”

Among other compromises offered Monday, Democrats said they would agree to spend the $678 million on class size reductions, but only for first and second grades. They would offer $218 million for cutting class size in third grade, but only if schools are given the flexibility to spend that money on other needs if they cannot provide the extra classroom space or other resources necessary to reach the goal of 20 students per teacher.

Wilson began pushing for reductions in class size in first and second grade in May. But the Republican governor began championing the third-grade reductions only last week, after Democratic opposition forced him to drop his proposal to cut state income taxes.

Wilson insists that the money that would have gone for the income tax cut now be used to reduce class size in third grade.