Comments on: Educators fear deeper cuts

By: Parent

Parent — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 20:22:29 +0000

Priorities need to be adjusted, not tax rates. We all want the best for our schools and our students. No one wants schools to fail, but how is Prop 30 the answer? Prop 30 does not provide $1 more for our schools than they get today. All it does is pay the schools the money that has been promised, but deferred forcing many districts to borrow and spend down reserves. The state needs to pay the money that has been promised – without raising our taxes more. With state revenue down, the government needs to concentrate on essential programs – like education and infrastructure – and cut support for special interest programs.

By: Education should be a priority

Education should be a priority — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 05:42:09 +0000

How is the school money wasted? Give me some examples. Schools are running more efficiently than ever. You say you love the parks and senior programs. How do you know that they aren’t wasting money running those? It’s easy to say we need to pay less taxes and complain about all the waste if you don’t have to offer any examples. Your scenario is the job killer. Let the state go broke and lose valuable middle class jobs. There is a reason Sacramento is lagging in the recovery behind the rest of the state. State and federal workers have been cut and even though you hate those government workers you can’t deny they’re spendable income is vital to the economy of the region. We need to protect those jobs. Teachers are barely hanging on to that middle class status. Benefits are awful, pay is frozen or down, working conditions continue to worsen and job security is non existent. Yes I come from a family of teachers and many are considering new careers. Not because they want to but because they can’t afford to do it and would like to plan a family or buy a house but can’t because they get pink slips every year. My neighbor has taught for 20 years and can’t afford to fix his car and is not sure if he’ll have a job if prop 30 doesn’t pass. He’s doing the job of three teachers now because of budget cuts so I don’t know where the waste is. My daughter’s school has 1 counselor for the whole high school and she was laid off during the last school year so the school had none until they fired a couple maintenance guys to hire her back. The library has minimal hours, they no longer have paper towels in the bathrooms and they barely offer enough classes to graduate. I go to school board meetings as much as I can to at least voice my concerns. Im appalled there are not more people there. There is only so much the board can do as they are continually asked to do more with less. I don’t see the waste, I just see the cuts and it is impacting our schools and kids.

By: Terry Crumpley

Terry Crumpley — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 00:28:02 +0000

And who paid for the infrastructure? Those schools, roads, bridges and so forth were built by people who were paid for their work and the taxpayers, including business owners and public servants, paid for that infrastructure. And who pays for the parks, senior services and all else listed? The taxpayers! I love the parks, the Senior programs and many of those other programs. Those are not the programs to which I refer as “garbage”. I will happily pay taxes for those things! And I do. However, a huge amount of money is absolutely wasted and misspent. How can that be denied? Parent provides a valuable link to the 500+ California state agencies. That list is what I was referring to. Many of those are duplications, waste and yes – garbage! Please explain how we have billions for high speed rail to nowhere, but nothing for our schools? I have three children in our public schools. I don’t live under a rock as you suggest. I live under heavy regulation, high taxes and a great deal of government waste. No tax is ever temporary. If our CA government would stop burdening the job creators and other revenue producers, quit killing jobs and running income producers out of the state, and more importantly, start cutting the waste and duplication, and stop the wasteful and misguided spending, we wouldn’t be in a position in which we are asked, once again, to tax ourselves more. Perhaps we should simply agree to disagree.

By: Parent

Parent — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 17:41:18 +0000

Yes, education should be a priority – not just for taxpayers, but also for those who spend the tax dollars. Here is a partial list of the 500+ California state agencies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_state_agencies I wonder why there is no money for schools (and don’t even get started on high speed rail and other areas of wasted tax $).

By: Education should be a priority

Education should be a priority — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 03:55:33 +0000

Where does our education money go? Same place as it always has – to the schools. You need to understand where revenues for schools comes from in California. Schools make up about 40 percent of the California budget. When the economy sucks schools will probably take a hit since they are such a large percentage of the budget. In case you have been living under a rock California was hit hard by the recession. A great deal of revenue is created by a taxes on capital gains which disappeared in the crash. Dot com money dried up, jobs were lost, houses dropped in value and much taxable income was lost from the crash. I believe we have turned the corner and things will slowly improve in our state. I do think we need to set aside money in good years to weather the bad years but that does us no good in this discussion. Schools are already leaner than they’ve ever been in this state. If you are OK with class size increases, loss of curriculum, shortened school years and a poorer education for our already 47th ranked kids then just say that’s what you want. I am all for a temporary tax relief for our kids. If all you think our government is are schools, police and fire and the rest is garbage then I think you should just stay home and not use any of the infrastructure like roads, water, libraries, food safety, parks, recreation programs, senior services, transportation, healthcare workers, public servants – you know the stuff you depend on everyday but take for granted.