Republican Assembly members announced a series of bills aimed at education reform Thursday. While none of the bills called for increased funding directly, they do call for eliminating some of the regulatory burden schools and districts face around their finances.
“The key of what we’re trying to do is strip some of the handcuffs that are put on them,” said Republican leader Mike Villines of Clovis. “Most of them will say if they can use funds in different ways to manage tough times, that’s what we want to do — give them flexibility to do it.”
Tags: assembly, legislature, reform, republicans
April 10, 2008 at 11:54 am
Much of the funding received by California schools is encumbered by restrictions pertaining to its use, and yes, these restrictions do need to be addressed and in many cases removed. Hundreds of thousands of dollars could probably be saved purely by reducing the time spent verifying that every expenditure charged to allocated funds follows every restriction placed on those funds.
The state also needs to take a much closer look at the long-term effects of the $4 billion budget cuts, and decide if it is more cost-effective to reduce education spending now, or to increase the number of police, fire, and emergency service providers, the number of jails and corrections officers, and the number of judges and courts ten years from now. Many studies have been done that show that the rate of violent crime is far higher among populations with few high school graduates; how many more people in the future will lack a high school diploma because today’s budget cuts increase the difficulty of obtaining one?