Teachers take action to achieve greater investment in schools

With the guarantee of a free public education for all children at stake, the California Teachers Association is launching an aggressive organizing and political campaign for the year 2000.

CTA President Wayne Johnson decries state's below-average commitment to education.

"Teachers are fed up with the bureaucratic education reform flavor-of-the-month," says CTA President Wayne Johnson. "We've been blamed for every mistake in education, when the reality is teachers have performed despite the odds against them, teaching more children than ever before and graduating more high school and college students than the rest of the world."

Johnson says it's time to look at non-politically motivated "basic" reforms: more money for our schools, upgrading our classrooms, and providing more books, supplies and technology to our kids.

Approved by State Council in October, the CTA 2000 organizing plan calls upon teachers to engage seriously in actions to achieve greater investment in public education. Every child deserves a qualified teacher, adequate textbooks and supplies, a clean and safe learning environment, and the chance to attend a public college or university. This cannot be achieved if California continues to spend $1,000 less than the national average per child on education.

In the 1997-98 school year, California ranked 40th in the country in the amount of money spent per student on education.

"That's embarrassing and unacceptable," says Johnson. "We live in the richest state in America with the seventh largest economy in the world, yet the state's commitment to education is below average. It's time for teachers to let the voters, the governor and the Legislature know we are serious about our commitment to the public school children of this state and the need to increase spending on education."

As part of its organizing plan, CTA is taking this message directly to its nearly 300,000 members and to California voters. A paid advertising campaign - similar to the Straight Talk radio ads that aired last fall - will begin at the end of March. It will include television and radio commercials on stations across the state.

In conjunction with the advertising campaign, a number of local CTA chapters are planning to sponsor grassroots activities to raise community awareness and commitment. The effort culminates with a statewide rally in Sacramento with students, teachers, and parents from every district in California. The rally will coincide with the announcement of the May revision of the state budget. The goal is to pound the message home to the Legislature and the governor that "below average" is not acceptable, says Johnson. Concurrent rallies will be held in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, Shasta-Tehama, Bakersfield and San Diego.

CTA is also sponsoring two ballot initiatives aimed at improving education in California for our kids and our teachers:

• Proposition 26 on the March 7 ballot would make it easier for local communities to invest in their schools, while holding school districts accountable for every penny spent. The Let's Fix Our Schools initiative would reduce the two-thirds vote requirement needed to pass local school bonds to a simple majority of 50 percent plus one.
• The second initiative, the Reinvesting in California Schools Act, would require the state Legislature to raise per-pupil spending to the national average within five years. It would let lawmakers determine how to pay for closing the gap without taking money from Prop. 98 or other state programs. The initiative would provide an additional $200 million to the state's three public institutions of higher education.

Sometimes the math just doesn't make sense, says Johnson. In 1965, California ranked fifth in per-pupil spending on education. Today, California ranks 40th. "California has a state budget surplus of almost $6 billion, yet teachers are spending hundreds and even thousands of dollars a year out of their own pockets just to buy supplies for their classrooms."

Recent CTA polls show that more than 80 percent of California voters believe state spending on education should be at least at the national average. More than 60 percent say they would support increasing taxes a little to help the state catch up.

"If public education keeps going the way it is going, it will die," says Johnson. "Teachers must lead the fight to save our schools. We are the only ones who know what is needed and how to do it. We just have to decide that we have had enough, and we are going to do it!"