After Reneging on His Promise to Schools, Schwarzenegger’s Marks Slip

What started out as mere scuff marks on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s battle armor has worsened into damaging corrosion.

The scuff marks were reported here three months ago, based on a statewide poll by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. It showed that Schwarzenegger still was popular -- 60% approved of his job performance, only 33% disapproved -- but Democrats were starting to sour on him. They particularly objected to his education policies.

Since then, the governor’s overall approval rating has been falling in all public polls.

Now a new survey by the policy institute finds, for the first time, that significantly more people disapprove of Schwarzenegger’s job performance than approve of it: 40% approve, 50% disapprove. Even among likely voters, who tend to be more conservative than the overall population, just 45% approve and 47% disapprove.

The poll points to a key reason for Schwarzenegger’s slippage: Those education scuff marks have corroded his popularity.

He still gets roughly the same bad marks on education that he got in January: Only 28% approve of the way he is handling K-12 schools; 51% disapprove. But, unlike before, the ed ratings are substantially affecting his overall grade. Of those who flunk his school performance, 79% also disapprove of his overall job-handling. In January, only 51% did.

“There’s a direct correlation,” says PPIC pollster Mark Baldassare. “Schools have become symptomatic of people’s fundamental concerns about his leadership style and abilities.

“People were giving Schwarzenegger the benefit of the doubt, even though they disagreed with him on education. Now, education is turning out to be a leading indicator of how they feel about his style of leadership.”

There’s also certainly a direct correlation between Schwarzenegger’s plummeting popularity and the $5 million in TV attack ads run against him by the California Teachers Assn. and its education allies. The spots have pummeled Schwarzenegger for breaking his word to schools. Basically, he borrowed $2 billion from the school kitty to finance other state expenses and now isn’t repaying it, as promised.

The governor is proposing an extra $2.9 billion for schools, but that’s $2 billion short of what they’re owed -- based on the deal he cut with them.

“I sat at a table with the governor and his finance people and representatives of the education coalition, and we reached an agreement,” says Carla Nino of Woodland Hills, president of the state PTA. “I heard him say he’d pay it back this year. I believed him. He was a new governor. You have to give people the benefit of their word. Which is why we’re so upset now.

“I have to tell you, we feel like we were suckered.”

PTA members have been dogging Schwarzenegger all over California, protesting his policies. So have teachers, nurses, firefighters and cops, specifically targeting his recently scuttled initiative to end traditional pension plans for new public employees. This also surely has damaged the governor.

Today, hundreds of parents from throughout the state plan to rally against Schwarzenegger outside the Capitol.

“I’m a Democrat who voted for Schwarzenegger,” says Wendy Bokota, an Irvine PTA activist and mother of two elementary school children. “Like everybody else, I voted without being really informed about the issues. I believed people when they said Gray Davis really was causing problems. I thought Schwarzenegger had the ability to make change -- and he does, but he’s trying to do it on the backs of education.

“I thought repealing the vehicle license fee sounded great and would save me a lot of money, but I didn’t understand the problems it was going to cause the state budget.”

It’s costing the state $4 billion annually in tax revenue.

Schwarzenegger did keep his promise to cut the car tax and not raise other taxes. But to do that, he chose to break his word to schools.

As previous governors have found, it’s dangerous to fight schools -- especially the teachers union. Calling the CTA and the PTA “special interests” may be accurate, but voters aren’t moved. They just shrug and focus on their kids’ educations.

And currently, according to the Baldassare poll, 52% of Californians think there’s a “big problem” with the quality of elementary and high schools in this state.

This should be the clincher for Schwarzenegger: More people trust Democratic legislators to make budget choices for schools (38%) than trust him (24%).

There is some good news for the governor in this survey: 64% agree with him that teachers should be paid based on merit rather than seniority. And 54% like his proposal to increase from two to five the years of experience required for teacher tenure. Both ideas are ballot initiatives he has promoted.

But his merit pay concept is so controversial and impractical that Schwarzenegger unofficially has given up on it. The tenure idea is hardly worthy of the word “reform” -- and certainly not a costly special election. The governor’s only other school “reform” is to pare back the Proposition 98 funding guarantee.

This is not cutting it with Californians.

Schwarzenegger needs to repay schools the $2 billion, even if it means raising taxes.

He should negotiate real education reform with legislators -- whom the people, after all, trust more.

And he needs to forget about a $70-million special election and spend that money on low-performing schools.

This will help clean up the corrosion.

George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.