Friday, February 11, 2011

How Bad is the Budget Deficit in California? (Jeff, Article Five)

Howard Blume
"New School Supt. Tom Torlakson Cites Worsening Financial Picture" (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/01/state-supt-torlakson-says-school-funding-worse-than-imagined-and-getting-worse-still.html)
LA Times (reporter blog)
January 6, 2011

Summary:
California is in deep, deep, deep trouble. they have cut nearly $18 billion from education in the last three state budgets. Meanwhile, well over a third of the state's $28 billion budget deficit is attributed to education. More cuts are sure to come. Meanwhile, 174 California districts are in danger of defaulting on their loans.

Intended Audience: General Public

Key Points: 1) Really only one key point to be taken away from this article: schools are strapped for cash.

Relevance: Well, for one thing the open market is about to become saturated with another 30,000 qualified and experienced teachers. Really though, the educational budget crisis brings a lot of issues to light. Perhaps, we rely too much on public funding. Is it possible that compulsory public education is obsolete? Furthermore, budget cuts put an immense stress on teachers who have actually managed to hold on to their jobs as new value-added measures and new standardized tests are implemented to weed out the "bad" teachers. There are a myriad of talking points that cluster around the topic of the budget shortfall in education.

2 comments:

  1. By the way, the LA Times has a very active community that comments abundantly on almost every article I've posted. The comments are often insightful and thought provoking, and I would encourage you to read them as well as the article (though take them with a grain of salt as they do not come from verifiable or reliable sources).

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  2. California has had this shortfall coming for a long time as they have decided to go on spending, but never effectively deal with where the money for all of this spending will come from. They along with other states have just pushed the monetary shortfall down the road for the next administration to deal with. I know it appears to be happening in many states, but it seems to be more in Democrat (sorry to be political here) controlled states as they want all the social programs, but no way to pay for them except by raising taxes and/or spending. Add to the issue aging teachers who cannot retire because of undervalued pension funds and you are going to have a lot of pain when it comes to making budget and cutting decisions.

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