Steinberg creates flap over Edujobs dollars
Scolded for his candor, Sen. President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg is back on message: The gift $1.2 billion that Congress will soon be sending California’s way will supplement, not supplant, state education dollars.
To what extent it will is far from certain.
Steinberg was caught Tuesday in the crossfire in the U.S. Senate race between Republican Carly Fiorina and Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer after Sacramento Bee reporter Kevin Yamamura reported that Steinberg said the extra education money Congress passed this month will “help plug the state’s $19 billion deficit.” (Clarification: The phrase in quotes was the reporter’s words, not the senator’s.)
That’s not supposed to be the purpose. California’s share of the $10 billion Edujobs bill is intended as a one-time job relief, to put many of the 16,500 laid off teachers back to work, not fix the state’s fiscal mess per se.
Fiorina used the Bee post to bash Boxer, who fought for the extra federal spending: “Another day, another broken promise from Barbara Boxer,” said a campaign press release.
It didn’t take long for Boxer to get on the horn to Steinberg’s office and to send out her own press release, reminding him, though not directly by name, “This funding can only be used to save education jobs that serve our children in public schools – and nothing else.”
It didn’t take long for Steinberg to clarify his statement – sort of – by issuing a statement blasting Fiorina for distorting his comment in the Bee. “News flash to Fiorina: keeping teachers on the job does help the state balance its budget. Governor Schwarzenegger’s budget proposes to slash school funding by billions, which would result in thousands of teacher layoffs throughout the state. This is an outcome that Senator Boxer and Senator Steinberg want to avoid.”
Schwarzenegger’s proposed spending $49 billion on K-12 schools in his revised budget in May. Steinberg and Democrats in the Legislature are calling for spending $52 billion.
The extra $1.2 billion from the feds could indeed help bridge the difference, which is what Steinberg implied in the Bee article. But that wouldn’t please school advocates. In the last salvo of the day, the Ed Coalition, representing organizations for teachers, school boards and parents, issued a statement urging lawmakers “to take urgent action to ensure that federal funding passed by Congress is distributed to schools immediately and not used to fix the state’s budget crisis.”
Negotiations between the governor and legislative leaders will determine how much schools will get. Meanwhile, until federal dollars actually arrive, few teachers are likely to be rehired. School has started in many districts, and, uncertain how much they’ll have to spend, many superintendents and school board have been reluctant to call back teachers yet.
It could be a few weeks before districts have the money in hand. The feds have to sign off on the state’s application, and the Legislature must then approve it. The Department of Finance has two options for distributing the money: by each district’s standard appropriation, a formula based on average daily attendance, or by a formula weighted toward Title I money for low-income students. The state hasn’t said which it will choose.
John, two questions. (a) how solid is the 16,500 number of “laid off teachers” that you mention? (b) in recent years (since 2004-5) there has been a steady drop in student enrollment in California, on the order of 0.2-0.4% per year. Can you help us with comparing the student population growth in California since 2004-5 and teacher employment growth in that time? If the enrollment figures for 2009-10, or predictions for 2010-11, reflect also drops in enrollment perhaps a comparable drop in teachers is also justified? After all, 16,500 teachers are also about 0.5% of California teachers.
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The application required the Governor to choose which method for allocation. He chose to distribute by the state’s revenue limit, not Title I.
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Mr Wurman’s math is off by a bit… If 16,500 represents 0.5% of California’s teachers, then we have over 3,300,000 teachers in California? Our entire population is somewhere between 36 Million and 40 million, total. Sounds statistically impossible for roughly 10 percent of our total population to be teachers….
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Enrollment is down 1.1% from a peak in 2005 according to the state’s own data at:
http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/Navigation/fsTwoPanel.asp?bottom=/profile.asp%3Flevel%3D04%26reportNumber%3D16
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Keith Griffith is right … a small factor of 10 … that’s what happens when you post in the middle of the night. Sorry! Still, is the 16,500 correct? From what I heard, most of the pink slips were pulled back months ago.
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The state Dept. of Ed doesn’t track layoffs; it unfortunately relies on the CTA for its estimates. The latest CTA figure is 14,000, as Rob Manwaring noted.
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To answer Ze’ev’s question, the CTA reported in a Mercury news story this weekend that initially 26,000 teachers were given pink slips, and their current estimate is that 14,000 have not yet been rehired. So in theory this federal funding could result in all of those teachers being rehired. But, see my blog post on the Quick and the Ed to understand why that is not likely to happen. http://www.quickanded.com/2010/08/will-edujob-funding-help-save-teacher%e2%80%99s-jobs-or-help-california-balance-its-budget.html
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Great article, but analysis on funding distribution is a bit off.
Federal application didn’t require Governors distribute on basis of Title 1 or ADA. It required a choice between Title 1 or the “primary elementary and secondary education funding formula(e) as identified in its application for funding under the SFSF program.” (Education Job Funds Application, p. 3)
Governor A.S. chose the latter; and his SFSF application last year stated our state’s primary formulae are both revenue limits (ADA) and categoricals (funds that typically target poor students). Presumably this means money will go out on basis of both ADA and categorical funding share. Will be interesting to see if they do a 50/50 split like they did for SFSF, or if the split is different this time.
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Thanks. I hadn’t been able to track down the two choices.
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