ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : Who’s in Charge of Schooling--School Boards or Sacramento? : The hike in education funds won’t do students much good if the state continues its top-down resource allocation.

When California’s new pro-education governor, Gray Davis, signed the state budget in June, he properly heralded a significant 6.1% increase in revenue for public education. Once the celebration had settled down and the smoke cleared, however, what was revealed was that this budget, despite its significant funding increase, could actually harm basic educational programs.

The average Orange County citizen may wonder what’s going on. While state officials are exulting in their largess to public education, newspaper stories report that local school districts are preparing to cut programs and searching for ways to curtail basic operations. According to The Times, for example, Saddleback Valley is having difficulty funding its modest 1999-2000 1% cost-of-living adjustment for employees. Also reported, the Irvine school board, as an alternative to some serious budget cuts, will have a parcel tax on the November ballot to fill a projected $2.4-million budget deficit. In my own district of Capistrano, our final 1999-2000 general-fund budget reflected a deficit spending level of about $5 million.

How could this happen? How could the governor and other state elected officials be holding press conferences to boast of “windfalls” in public education spending while well-managed districts in Orange County and throughout the state are in dire financial straits?

The answer, and the devil, is in the details of the state budget. Davis and the legislature, while providing a 6.1% increase in state funding, allocated only a 1.4% cost-of-living adjustment for districts’ discretionary use to pay for continuing programs and services. Most of the remainder of the increase is then earmarked to fund a series of state initiatives. This latest budget is simply a reflection of a path state leaders have been on for four years as they have usurped the decision-making prerogatives of local teachers, administrators and school boards.

With the overwhelming amount of new education money being directed to state-initiated programs, districts do not have adequate funding to handle ever-increasing operational costs, including such basic items as employee health insurance, trash collection fees, gasoline for school buses and the like.

Although a case could be made to support any of the numerous individual state priorities, and while few could disagree with such items as school safety, the problem is in the cookie-cutter approach the state is using to manage from Sacramento the programs, operations and allocation of funds for 1,000 diverse school districts.

Perhaps the most onerous decision in the state budget this year is the allocation of more than $50 million to subsidize districts that maintain starting teacher salaries of less than $32,000 a year. This is not only a terribly unfair law but is poor public policy in a state that espouses local control. In our district, starting teachers earn $33,592. Our school board deferred expenditures on other educational programs to place our limited resources where there would be the greatest benefit to students. The Legislature now will be taking dollars from districts that have already made a commitment to the recruitment and salary enhancement of high-quality teachers, and rewarding those districts that have not had such a priority in the past. Sadly, however, this action also removes any incentive for districts to fund competitive salary schedules. The mentality will become “Just let the state take care of it.”

The state needs to make up its mind. Complete the task of micro-managing public schools by doing away with locally elected school boards and school districts, and then make all educational decisions from Sacramento, including having statewide collective bargaining. Or, reverse the current top-down governance and resource allocation systems and develop an appropriate role for itself in public education. A simple and straightforward one would be to set appropriate standards for student achievement and establish meaningful accountability systems. Then, the state should get out of the way of local school districts and allow us to do our job.

In opinion polls and surveys taken through the years, one major point usually comes forward. People trust and support the level of government that is closest to them. Since school board members are locally elected officials, it is time to reverse California’s highly centralized educational governance trend and return some element of control to local districts. If a district cannot report progress in student achievement, has demonstrated that it manages irresponsibly or makes decisions inimical to the interests of children, a number of sanctions, including state takeover, would, of course, be appropriate.

If Sacramento continues on its present course, however, good school districts like Saddleback, Irvine and Capistrano, and the children we serve, will suffer. Our message to the governor and state Legislature: Please return control of local schools to local people.