Looks like financially-suffering and resource-deficient schools are about to get even more beleaguered. Governor-Elect Jerry Brown is trying to tame the state’s financial woes (there’s a $25.4 billion budget deficit) and is taking no prisoners. One of the first items to be cut: education. He plans to present his budget proposal on Jan 10th and it won’t be pretty. Why is it that every time cuts need to be made, education is the first item to hit the chopping block. Is there nothing else?

Let me be blunt: California public schools suck. They really do. Yes, I know that there are village schools in, say, Afghanistan and the wilds of Tanzania that are worse off, but still. As the SF Chronicle reports, “The Democrat [Jerry Brown] called education and public safety the pillars of a civilized society but warned that the magnitude of the deficit problem facing California is “unprecedented in my lifetime” and that the state must prepare for drastic changes.

“I can’t promise there won’t be more cuts, because there will be,” he told a gathering of school administrators, teachers union representatives and other public education officials from across the state during a special budget forum in Los Angeles.”

If education is one of the pillars of a civilized society – and yet you are cutting so many holes in it that it’s become as flimsy as a lace doily – then it’s safe to assume that CA is fast becoming uncivilized.

To read more, go here.

• Tag: budgets, cuts, education, Jerry Brown, news