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SchoolsApril Issue, 2010, Potrero View

By Steve J. Moss

In late February – weeks before early-March street protests – concerned citizens packed the Marina Middle School’s auditorium demanding more money for public schools.  A phalanx of parents from Starr King Elementary was on hand in matching t-shirts, with a dozen from Daniel Webster Elementary School similarly attired in the audience.  All told, parents and teachers from 70 San Francisco schools were in the room, virtually all with the same message:  stop cutting resources for our children’s education.

Even before this year’s threatened two-year $113 million budget shortfall California schools were severely underfunded.  The state is fourth from the bottom in per student investment, spending $2,400 less than the national average, and half as much as New York or New Jersey.  Two years of severe budget deficits have driven this investment even lower, though the City’s rainy day fund filled in significant gaps last year.  The list of essential educational resources that most of our public schools don’t have is exhausting:  teacher’s aides, fully functioning arts or science programs, up-to-date computer technology, decent playgrounds, consistently high-quality after school programs, gymnasiums, functioning cafeterias or auditoriums.  And things are about to get worse.

Despite this lack of resources, many of our students do remarkably well, their education nurtured by well-organized teachers dedicated to their craft, bolstered by families who want their children to succeed.  But one out of five high school students drop-out every year.  And, if my decade-long experience teaching at San Francisco State University is any indication, there’s been a steady decline in educational achievement, with too many students graduating unable to write, or even think, well.

Without a significant infusion of cash in the next four months, essential services will be slashed.  The number of teachers will go down, class sizes will go up, and art and science education will largely evaporate.  In this environment, and unless it’s directly linked to the receipt of federal funds, the state should suspend testing for elementary school students.  Testing costs time and money, and is of questionable value for anyone under the age of twelve.  As United Educators of San Francisco’s president Dennis Kelly put it, we need to bolster the basics, focusing our resources on students, teachers, and books.    

Superintendent Carlos Garcia should structure conservations about how to balance the budget in ways that prompt creative-thinking and buy-in from stakeholders.  Facing a $7 million funding hole – an admittedly paltry amount compared to current travails – the Minnesota school district offered to direct 50 cents of every dollar in cuts identified by administrators, parents, teachers, and custodians into programs that they were able to demonstrate would improve student performance.  This approach created an incentive for groups who would otherwise bitterly bicker over whom should get what funding scrap to find innovative ways of reducing the budget deficit while funding effective programs.  The Minnesota process resulted in $14 million in agreed-upon budget reductions, of which $7 million was redirected to desired programs.

Revenue options to fill next year’s budget gap are limited, and mostly amount to praying for federal dollars or launching a citywide fundraising campaign.  Everyone needs to voluntarily step-up and write a check to a school or education fund.  Billionaires, millionaires, downtown businesses, and small businesses all need to pitch in.  Anyone with a job should walk to their nearest school and hand the receptionist one hundred dollars.  Mayor Gavin Newsom, who at the February gathering made a point of mentioning the more than one hundred calls he makes weekly to families whose children are chronically truant – a problem that bleeds both young minds and dollars from the school district – should instead start dialing for dollars among his network of well-heeled supporters.  In fact, every politician sitting on the podium at the meeting – Senator Mark Leno, Senator Leland Yee, Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, Supervisor David Chiu, and School Board member Jane Kim – should contact their campaign contributors and ask them to donate to local schools.

The City should circle its tattered expenditure wagons around our schools.  Every program that interacts with youth – from the Academy of Science to the Zoo – needs to examine how it can demonstrably increase the quality and level of services provided to school age children.  Although under budgetary siege themselves, Recreation and Parks, Muni, and even our criminal justice system should screen their budget policies through a sieve that puts children first. Likewise, reforms proposed by the Department of Children, Youth and Families to make after school programs more accessible and higher quality should be adopted.

The school district needs to unlock the revenue potential of its significant amounts of surplus properties, perhaps by spinning off building facilities into a separate operating trust, similar to the Presidio.  Unfortunately in these hard economic times, new taxes need to be considered to generate more revenues.  Although a parcel tax is a possibility, such an approach rests on a precariously narrow base.  Two-thirds of San Francisco residents rent, with property owners unable to pass on tax increases to their tenants.  As a result, a parcel tax will face significant political opposition, particularly from small property owners, the same people who vote in disproportionate numbers.  A better approach, championed by Leno, would be to allow counties to collect additional vehicle registration fees.  If San Francisco levied an additional .0085 percent tax on the value of the cars on its streets – $85 for a car worth $10,000 – it could collect upwards of $44 million.  Leno’s idea to place a one percent surcharge on entertainment tickets sold in California – which could collect $40 million annually to help pay for arts education – should also be adopted.

In the longer-run, the state needs to sort out the mess it’s made of its financing.  State and local governance is suffering from a slow death by a thousand poor policy choices, and a few stabs near the heart.  Proposition 13, our criminal injustice system and related prison complex – which eats up eleven percent of general fund expenditures – and minority rules voting requirements all need to be noticeably changed.  The accretion of ad hoc taxes, fees, expensive automatic pilot policies and expenditure set asides created by ballot initiatives and legislative action should be reformed into a sensible system of revenue generation and expenditures.

Though not glamorous, fighting for such a restructuring is essential to our prosperity and our children’s future.  Achieving this type of fundamental transformation will require a Lord of the Rings type quest, against all of the monsters of Mordor, in the form of too narrow special interests, fear of the future, and barriers to communication.  It’s a journey we must take together.