Forgive Patty Koel if she rants for a moment; she has a lot to say, and most of it is dire. “The last few years have been the most severe in terms of cuts that have entered into the classroom,” said the president of the PTA Council in Millbrae, a small community south of San Francisco. ”Last year we

PTA council president Patty Koel with students

increased the class size of our kindergarten through third grade by 50 percent, from 20 kids per class to 30 kids per class. This year we’ve completely eliminated five whole days from our school year. The school days are shorter; we have lost the dean of students at our Taylor Middle School; we no longer have a director of curriculum; we don’t have money to do staff development training for our teachers; we have reduced access to many of our programs, including libraries, technology, music, summer school, and GATE education; and our teachers simply don’t have the  support that they need for the large class sizes without the instructional aides because they’ve been laid off as well.”

Koel recited this shameful litany while standing on the breezy corner of a major intersection in Millbrae with about 100 other parents, students, teachers, and even the district superintendent. It was 5 o’clock yesterday afternoon and this was the last of a day full of rallies across the state organized by Educate Our State, a grassroots organization of parents opposed to any further cuts to schools. Earlier that morning, parents in Colfax and Venice turned out in their pajamas and poured coffee – taking to heart the campaign’s theme of “Wake up California!” – as in wake up and smell the decay of education.

The demonstrations launched phase two of the group’s efforts to persuade the state legislature to either put Gov. Brown’s tax extensions on the ballot

Millbrae students at Educate Our State rally

or to approve them in Sacramento. Earlier this spring, Educate Our State had organized a letter-writing campaign that generated more than 20,000 missives to state lawmakers. When the deadline passed for holding that election next month, the group’s leaders gathered at a library in San Francisco to regroup and start planning their next strategy. The new goal is to get the word out about the impact of the cuts on local schools, get people riled up, and have them focus that frustration on lobbying lawmakers.

“I think the overall goal is to share with everybody, even those who don’t have children, that what the state is doing is wrong, that our schools have been underfunded for too long, and before we start permanently damaging our children we need to change how our schools are funded,” said Doreen Dennehy, who has two children in Millbrae schools and serves on the board of the local education foundation.

The foundation is trying to raise half a million dollars by May 31^st, in order to save half a dozen jobs in the district, including the last remaining counselor at the middle school. Millbrae isn’t facing larger cuts than any other district in California – about $330 per student if the tax extension doesn’t pass – but given how small the district is, just 2,200 students, losing upwards of $730,000 would be difficult to absorb. Any additional cuts will be programmatic, said Superintendent Linda Luna; they’ve already whacked the biggest expense, class size reduction, and the impact of that hasn’t been lost on students.

“When we walk into our class it feels really crowded and it’s just noisier by the second,” said fourth grader Hailey Hernandez, who came to the

4th grader Hailey Hernandez

demonstration with her parents and little brother. Hailey says the noise makes it harder for her to concentrate on her work in class and she senses that the teacher is frustrated.

Educate Our State has tapped into this frustration, especially among parents, many of whom moved to their neighborhoods on the reputation of the schools. They’ve been holding a series of house meetings around the state to bring together parents and prepare them for local organizing by giving them a crash course in school funding. At a recent house meeting sponsored in Burlingame, an affluent community in San Mateo County, parents vented their irritation while sipping wine in Gisela Paulsen’s living room.

One of the their biggest complaints is how much money parents have to put into the schools to maintain the quality they expect. Some said they won’t contribute as a matter of principle. Others, like Paulsen, feel they have no choice. “Here in Burlingame we have an excellent school system,” Paulsen said, “but I am now saying that we have our kids in a privately funded public school.”