Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility
Read This to Learn Why CA's Public Schools Are Failing
Joe-Mathews
By Joe Mathews
Published 7 years ago on
August 24, 2018

Share

Don’t squeeze your kids too hard as you send them off to another school year, because the state of California is already squeezing your kids hard enough to hurt their future.
Call it The Great California School Squeeze.

Portrait of Joe Mathews
Opinion
Joe Mathews
The state is stuck in a nasty school funding paradox: Even though our school districts have never had higher funding levels than they do right now, many districts face financial peril.
Why? Because The Squeeze is a torture machine with three ratchets.

Pensions, Low Birth Rates, Closing Achievement Gap

First, escalating payments and obligations for retirement benefits are growing so fast (more than 100 percent in this decade in many districts) that they gobble up most of the rising education funding all by themselves. That leaves little for today’s students and teachers.

Escalating payments and obligations for retirement benefits are growing so fast (more than 100 percent in this decade in many districts) that they gobble up most of the rising education funding all by themselves.
Second, with California’s birth rate at a record low, the number of students is stagnant in some districts and declining in others.  Since school funding is granted on a per-student basis, fewer students mean less funding, even at the higher rates.
Third, the state is pressuring schools to take expensive new measures to address major social problems — including shortages of college graduates and systemic inequality that leaves poorer young people lagging. Elaborate new state measurement systems for schools go far beyond test scores to assess everything from equity to school discipline. A new funding formula that gives more money to poorer schools has created pressure to eliminate achievement gaps.

Politically Impossible to Cut Pensions

So The Squeeze, in essence, requires producing millions more educated California adults from a smaller student population even as retirees grab bigger shares of available funds. California’s famously complicated legal barriers to cutting pensions and raising taxes may make breaking free of The Squeeze politically impossible.
But a failure to escape The Squeeze threatens what was once the essence of California: our leadership in knowledge and technology.
For the past half-century, California has been steadily giving away the lead it once held over the rest of the country and the world in education.

California Once Had a Great Education System

In 1970, according to a new Chapman University report, Californians were better educated than the average American. The state had a higher percentage of adults with college degrees — and a lower proportion of adults with less than a high school education — than the nation as a whole.

For the past half-century, California has been steadily giving away the lead it once held over the rest of the country and the world in education.
But California now has the second-highest percentage of adults with less than a high school education in the country (and had fallen, as of 2012, to 14th in the percentage of adults with college degrees). California was one of only four states to see an increase in the number of people with less than a high school degree between 1970 and 2012. By comparison, the large, diverse states of Texas and New York both have seen declines in their numbers of adults without high school diplomas.
Reversing such trends would be a monumental task for California even in ideal conditions. But in the midst of The Squeeze, it seems impossible. School districts, rather than adding programs, are freezing budgets, laying off teachers, and forcing school closures.

Cities Closing Public Schools

This process may be ugliest in Oakland, where the school board members have publicly declared, “We have too many schools.” What Oakland really has is rising retiree costs and much lower student enrollment, putting the district in danger of returning to state receivership.
In Southern California, my hometown of Pasadena has announced plans to close five schools starting next year, including the last two public schools in the neighborhood where I grew up.
The Squeeze also limits California’s instructional hours, despite research showing that more time to learn is essential for making educational gains. We might live in the world’s fifth-largest economy, but I’m about to send my youngest child to my local elementary school where he will only have a half-day of kindergarten because that’s all that our state funds.
It’s obvious that California needs to give its schools more. But from where?
Today’s kids and teachers are already taking hits from The Squeeze. And even if it were possible to claw back pensions from retired teachers, it wouldn’t be fair. Teachers don’t get Social Security and their pensions are reasonable, averaging just over $50,000. This reflects the Penis Rule of Pension Abuses; scandalously large retirement payouts, like the $1.27 million recently given to L.A.’s police chief, usually come from predominantly male professions like fire and police.
Unfortunately, there is no way to get the money from those most at fault: Previous state and local politicians who made retirement promises without properly funding or disclosing them. Much of The Squeeze on California schools today comes from efforts to recover from years of underfunding of pensions by accelerating school districts’ contributions to the two state pension funds that cover school workers and teachers.

Recession Could Force Massive District Cuts, Even Bankruptcies

What’s most scary about The Squeeze is that it’s likely to get worse. The Squeeze has hit hard even as the stock market has risen and the economy has expanded; a recession and stock market decline would make The Squeeze so bad that school districts could be forced into massive cuts and bankruptcy.
If you’re surprised to be reading all of this, that is by design.

Districts Hide the Ugly Numbers

School districts often hide the growing size of their retiree obligations deep in budget documents. Many districts ask local voters for additional taxes which delay the reckoning but don’t fix the problem. Diminished local media don’t have resources to cover it. And powerful teachers’ unions have tried to shift blame for The Squeeze to their favorite bogeyman, charter schools, even though they are a small piece of the public school system.
You also aren’t hearing about The Squeeze during the campaign season. The endless state media celebration of Gov. Jerry Brown’s tenure has obscured the crisis. Political candidates have offered few ideas for tackling The Squeeze, because, well, there are few ideas for tackling The Squeeze.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.

Photo of a woman pulling budget binders from a shelf
School districts often hide the growing size of their retiree obligations deep in budget documents. (Shutterstock Photo)
Addressing The Squeeze starts with more transparency: Making it plain the ways in which retiree costs and enrollment declines are hurting today’s kids and teachers. While retired teachers must have their pensions protected, cost of living adjustments should stop. And districts should stop giving retired teachers separate health benefits; they should srely on the same public programs — Obamacare, Medicaid, and Medicare — that the rest of us do.
The savings from such changes won’t be nearly enough to escape The Squeeze, but they should make it possible to do more for today’s teachers. As David Crane of Govern for California has shown, school districts from San Francisco to Fresno are now devoting less than half of their revenues to compensation for today’s teachers.

How to Break Free of The Squeeze

But breaking the grip of The Squeeze will require more from California taxpayers — and not just small tax increases on the local level.
The state has two big dysfunctional systems that hurt today’s kids. One is a complex tax system, built around Proposition 13, that protects older homeowners. The other is a complex education funding system, built around Prop. 98, that ties education spending to the budget and economy, rather than to students’ needs. It has effectively acted as a cap on education spending since Prop. 98 was adopted 30 years ago.
Both systems need replacing. The Prop. 98 funding formula should die, and education funding should be tied to educational needs. Doing that would require tens of billions of new dollars each year, which in turn would necessitate a massive tax reform.
Of course, even such difficult and transformational reforms might not be enough for schools, now that state Democrats want to grab new tax dollars for a single-payer universal health care system. That might be a worthy goal. But California first needs to rescue the kids from The Squeeze that’s crushing our single-payer education system.
About the Author
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.

David Crane: They Count on You Not Knowing

DON'T MISS

Braves’ Jurickson Profar Hit With 80-Game PED Ban

DON'T MISS

Watch: City Demolishes Historic Chinatown Building to Make Way for Housing

DON'T MISS

The Mystery of Melania Trump’s Wedding Dress and an eBay Sale

DON'T MISS

Heading to Sierra? Prepare for Heavy Snow

DON'T MISS

Mexican National Caught in Fresno County Pleads Guilty to Fentanyl Trafficking

DON'T MISS

CA Snowpack Is Near-Average. What Does This Mean for Water Supplies?

DON'T MISS

Shohei Ohtani Adds Another No. 1 to His Resume: MLB’s Best-Selling Jersey

DON'T MISS

Tush Push Is the Hottest Topic at the NFL League Meetings

DON'T MISS

U.S. Bank Executive Terry Dolan Dies in Plane Crash Near Minneapolis

DON'T MISS

Trump Administration Will Review Billions in Funding for Harvard

UP NEXT

I Will Force Votes on Blocking Arms Sales to Israel: Sen. Bernie Sanders

UP NEXT

What Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs Could Mean for Americans: Fareed Zakaria

UP NEXT

A Look at Fresno City College’s New $87 Million Science Building

UP NEXT

Sue or Hold Back? The University of California Does Both as It Faces Trump’s Wrath

UP NEXT

Central Unified Takes Additional Steps To Protect Undocumented Students

UP NEXT

Why the Nation Would Be Wise to Support a Third Term Amendment for Donald Trump

UP NEXT

Cal State Automatically Admitting High School Students With Good Grades

UP NEXT

If California Bails Out LA’s $1 Billion Budget Deficit, Beware the Slippery Slope

UP NEXT

Things to Know About the Federal Investigation Into CA’s Law on Students and Gender

UP NEXT

Trump Has Had Enough. He Is Not Alone.

Heading to Sierra? Prepare for Heavy Snow

2 hours ago

Mexican National Caught in Fresno County Pleads Guilty to Fentanyl Trafficking

2 hours ago

CA Snowpack Is Near-Average. What Does This Mean for Water Supplies?

3 hours ago

Shohei Ohtani Adds Another No. 1 to His Resume: MLB’s Best-Selling Jersey

3 hours ago

Tush Push Is the Hottest Topic at the NFL League Meetings

3 hours ago

U.S. Bank Executive Terry Dolan Dies in Plane Crash Near Minneapolis

4 hours ago

Trump Administration Will Review Billions in Funding for Harvard

4 hours ago

Former MLB Pitcher CJ Wilson of Fresno on New Torpedo Bats: ‘Still Room for Innovation’

4 hours ago

Man Arrested After Shooting at Fresno’s Switch Nightclub

5 hours ago

Who Is Fresno’s ‘Fake’ ICE Agent? He Speaks Up

5 hours ago

Braves’ Jurickson Profar Hit With 80-Game PED Ban

NEW YORK — Atlanta Braves outfielder Jurickson Profar has been suspended for 80 games without pay for performance-enhancing drug use. Major ...

42 minutes ago

Jurickson Profar
42 minutes ago

Braves’ Jurickson Profar Hit With 80-Game PED Ban

1 hour ago

Watch: City Demolishes Historic Chinatown Building to Make Way for Housing

Photo of First Lady Melania Trump
2 hours ago

The Mystery of Melania Trump’s Wedding Dress and an eBay Sale

2 hours ago

Heading to Sierra? Prepare for Heavy Snow

Miguel Obed Romero Reyes, 25, of Sinaloa, Mexico, pleaded guilty Monday, March 31, 2025, to trafficking more than 200,000 fentanyl pills after authorities seized the drugs during a traffic stop on Interstate 5. (DOJ)
2 hours ago

Mexican National Caught in Fresno County Pleads Guilty to Fentanyl Trafficking

3 hours ago

CA Snowpack Is Near-Average. What Does This Mean for Water Supplies?

3 hours ago

Shohei Ohtani Adds Another No. 1 to His Resume: MLB’s Best-Selling Jersey

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (1) lines up for the goal line Tush Push play during the NFL championship playoff football game against the Washington Commanders, Jan. 26, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP File)
3 hours ago

Tush Push Is the Hottest Topic at the NFL League Meetings

Help continue the work that gets you the news that matters most.

Search

Send this to a friend