Welcome Back!



This morning I attended an Education Coalition budget briefing with Governor Schwarzenegger and Education Secretary Alan Bersin. The Governor expressed his appreciation for the Coalition’s willingness to reestablish a constructive dialogue about sufficient funding for K-12 education. Secretary Bersin shared the following oral summary of the proposed budget:



Proposed k-14 education funding will increase by $4.3 billion for a total of $54.3 billion in 2006/07. This amount includes:



· Full funding of COLA and growth - $2.27 billion

· Restoration of the Proposition 98 for maintenance factor for 2004/05 - $1.7 billion**

· Funding for the implementation of Proposition 49 – After School Programs - $428 million

· Deficit reduction funding - $205 million (about 2/3’s of what’s due)

· Mandate reimbursements - $133 million

· Equalization funding - $200 million (about 50% of the problem per DOF)

• Please note that the maintenance factor owed to schools is over $5 billion, under the terms of the agreement made with the Governor in 2004/05. Therefore, this amount represents a one-third repayment of that obligation. Secretary Bersin indicated that while we must agree-to-disagree for now about the proposal not fully repaying the debt owed, the administration is looking forward to positive, collaborative discussions with the Legislature and members of the education community on this topic.

In addition to the substantial discretionary funding outlined above, Secretary Bersin briefly outlined five Governor’s initiatives with on-going funding that will be included in the Governor’s budget:



· Teacher and Principal Quality and Recruitment block grant - $100 million for schools in deciles 1-3 for hard to staff schools and subject areas (math, science and special education)

· Career Technical Education - $30 million more to community colleges to fund expansion of “2 + 2” sequenced career technical coursework (on top of last year’s $20 million)

· California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) - $20 million more to provide support to students who have not passed the CAHSEE



In particular, the first issue seems to be short on detail both for accountability and implementation. The Secretary stressed that they welcome input from the education community to make it easy to administer and an effective use of funds. Please feel free to share your insights with Peter and me.



The Governor indicated that his infrastructure proposal will recognize the need to build schools quickly and that more details on that will be forthcoming in his State of the State address this Thursday night. The Speaker has already acknowledged that his bond bill – AB 58 will have funds set aside for career tech facilities.



The full and official Governor’s budget document will be out on Tuesday, January 10th. It will have more specific detail on specific programs.



Happy New Year. They’re already off to a hectic start so we’ll be in touch shortly.



Teri Burns

Birdsall & Associates

916-441-3302

tburns@edlobby.com