Superintendent's Perspective
Schools facing budget cuts
By Superintendent Ellen Smith Moorpark Unified School District

Our nation and our state are going through tough economic times. Our leaders are being called upon to make important strategic decisions about how to use public resources to address pressing current issues, from healthcare to national security.

As a professional educator, I have been watching the unproductive partisan battles in Sacramento and Washington with mounting alarm. If we are to have hope for a better tomorrow, our leaders must come together and produce fiscally responsible long-range plans that address the priorities of our citizens.

I would venture to say that there are few among us who would not place a very high value on favorable future prospects for our children and grandchildren. That being said, why is it that education, the pathway to economic opportunity, is on the governor's chopping block for across-the-board cuts with no analysis of the impact? The education of our children is not just another limitedconstituency special interest group.

An educated work force is the engine of our economy. Californians clearly indicated their fiscal priority concering education when they voted in Proposition 98 to ensure that minimum funding levels were maintained during lean times. Yet the governor has twice in three years proposed to suspend this proposition, an attitude that clearly violates the intent of the voters. In his State of the State address, the governor said "We don't have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem." California "must live within its means."

My message to the governor is that a budget plan that calls only for cuts is not a real solution. It doesn't address California's underlying problem of unstable state revenues and chronically inadequate funding of education. California has dropped from 43rd in the nation for education spending to a rank of 46th. The acrosstheboard reduction approach to fiscal solvency ignores priorities. The state's legislative analyst suggests that lawmakers prioritize programs and reconsider some existing tax credits and loopholes.

I call upon our elected officials to take courageous actions to address California's priorities and give our students a fighting chance to prepare for our shared economic future.

In the meantime, educators like me at the local level are redefining the core academic program down to the most basic elements, scrutinizing all operations and designating a list of budget reductions. In order to live within our diminished means, every service and position is in jeopardy of reduction, including:

• technology, textbooks and libraries

• teachers, aides and administrators

• counselors, nurses and psychologists

• support staff ranging from bus drivers to custodians

Despite the wonderful educational outcomes our schools are achieving, I am writing this with a heavy heart. Moorpark Unified School District will be forced to make some of the deepest cuts of programs and personnel that we have ever had to consider in order to be prepared with a balanced budget by the end of June.

California's schools and students did not create this budget problem, and their progress should not be undermined because of it. Our students need heroic political leadership in Sacramento to address the problems of wildly fluctuating funding for education.

The state's 1,000 school districts need to be able to count on stable funding to continue their primary mission of improving student achievement and preparing the educated work force that California needs to remain competitive in the world marketplace.