Superintendent's Message

Kenneth M. Young meets students at Red Maple Elementary School in Moreno Valley at the Riverside County 9-1-1 for Kids event, designed to teach children about when to call 9-1-1.

Kenneth M. Young
Riverside County Superintendent of Schools

Doing More with Less - Again

In preparing to write this message, I reviewed one I had written for our February 2008 Report to the Community. I was struck by the irony of how that message continues to fit what I have to say now doing more with less.

California’s schools continue to have more required of them — increasing student achievement while serving greater numbers of students and with decreasing resources. In 2008, we were expected to meet these requirements with billions of dollars less than 2007. In 2009, it’s more of the same.

Riverside County schools are making steady progress in improving student achievement. We ranked No. 1 in the state in closing the achievement gap among all groups of students on both state and federal accountability measures. Our top performing schools are scoring higher on the state’s Academic Performance Index that sets a high-end target of 800. Five schools scored over 900 this school year as compared to just two last year.

Our state instructional content standards are among the top three most rigorous in the nation, with a diverse language, ethnic, and economic student population. But California has an inherent financial problem unlike other states. For more than a century, our public education system was funded at the local level. In 1972, California ranked 10th nationally in per pupil funding.

But 30 years ago, the funding model changed, shifting responsibility from the local level to the state, which now determines over 80% of the funding that schools receive. For years, finance and education experts warned that the new funding model would overburden the state budget’s financial capacity, inadequately fund our public school system, and transfer local control of public education to the state. Local schools would have heavy accountability without authority to allocate resources.

California has dropped to almost dead last in per pupil funding. Hundreds of new bills are introduced each year, and if passed, they ultimately end up as regulations in California’s mammoth Education Code. We have introduced a new achievement gap: the gap between growing expectations for school performance and the local resources that can be invested to make it happen.

As I write this, state leaders are not even close to balancing the state budget. Just days after California adopted the 2008-09 state budget in October, the Governor convened a special legislative session to address a budget shortfall. Since then, the Legislature and the Governor have been grappling with an estimated $41 billion shortfall — the largest in U.S. history. There is no end in sight.

No one can deny that our national economy is in a recession, but we must also understand that no other state in this country is even considering the types of cuts  to their public education system that are being proposed in California. Solving this problem requires more than just saying “NO” to cuts or “NO” to taxes. It means all of us must fully comprehend the magnitude of the education funding problem facing us today and the impact it will have on us tomorrow if we do not take corrective action to fix it NOW.

We must be willing to make some difficult decisions and sacrifices in order to create funding solutions dedicated solely to public education.

California’s (and the nation’s) economy is only as strong as the education and skill level of those who work and live here. California — rated anywhere from the seventh to tenth largest economy in the world — needs a solidly funded public education system.

We must have an acceptable plan for funding our public education system that will move California back to at least the national average over the next seven to ten years and keep us there. We cannot afford to let our public education system continue to fall behind the rest of the country in funding. If we care at all about the goals of our public schools, we must also care about how we fund our schools. California must take corrective action now!

Kenn Young