About 1,600 fewer California students were enrolled at UC’s nine undergraduate campuses last fall as compared with the fall 2014 semester, including 1,317 fewer resident freshmen. UC declined to provide a breakdown by campus.
The governor believes he has identified school construction as an area of government inefficiency. The state covers half of the cost of school facilities through voter-approved general obligation bonds. Gov. Jerry Brown has said he wants the state to downsize its program so that state revenue would be available only to poorer districts that couldn’t raise money locally.
The administration’s revenue estimates for 2015–16 and 2016–17 are billions of dollars higher than they were in last year’s budget act. Higher revenues generate significant increases in Proposition 98 funding—$4.3 billion over the 2014–15 through 2016–17 period. After satisfying Proposition 98 and Proposition 2 requirements and funding adjustments to existing programs, the Governor’s plan allocates about $7 billion in discretionary General Fund resources.
School spending is also projected to go up whether or not the Proposition 30 taxes are extended. The Legislative Analyst’s Office, the state’s nonpartisan budget analyst, projects the minimum funding guarantee for public schools and community colleges is projected grow to $77.5 billion in 2019.
A Milliman actuarial report three years ago said if CalSTRS were still operating under its 1990 structure, without the changes made in the late 1990s, pensions would have been 88 percent funded instead of 67 percent.
Gov. Jerry Brown, issuing a $170.6 billion state spending plan Thursday, proposed billions of dollars in new funding for schools, climate change programs and services for the elderly and disabled.
The state’s 2015-16 budget plan—approved by the Legislature and the Governor in June 2015—was premised upon the administration’s May 2015 (“May Revision”) revenue projections. As shown below, for the state’s key taxes, the administration has lowered the budget act revenue assumptions slightly by $124 million for 2014-15 (the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2015), while increasing key tax projections by $3.6 billion for 2015-16 and $2.2 billion for 2016-17.
The school finance analysis examines school spending patterns and the distribution of funding across districts within each state. The finance indicators in Quality Counts 2016 are based on the most recent available data, which is from 2013.
The University of California is being pressed by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and a long list of high-powered CEOs to count computer science as a math course in deciding whether applicants meet its minimum standards to be considered for admission.
The Every Student Succeeds Act replaces the No Child Left Behind law that former President George W. Bush persuaded Congress to enact and state and local education officials intensely disliked as being too simplistic and inflexible in rating schools only on academic test results. . . In continuing to require officials to identify low-performing schools, the federal law also may rescue another aspect of the accountability process that the education establishment dislikes – the “parent trigger” law that allows parents to intervene when a school is failing, even seizing control and converting it to a charter.
The harder part, especially for states like California that rely so heavily on high-skilled workers, is to keep the momentum going when there is no slack in the system to draw from. Not only will education be a critical area of focus, but the state’s employers will also have to recruit skilled workers from other parts of the nation and world. And, as Beacon Economics has pointed out for some time, that will require addressing the chronic under-supply of housing and keeping home price growth in check.
Just under 66% of recent high-school grads were enrolled in two- or four-year college programs in 2013, down from 68.6% in 2008, according to research by the American Council on Education, a higher-education industry group.
The minimum funding guarantee for K-12 schools and community colleges is expected to surge to $77.5 billion by the 2019-20 school year – marking a five-year cycle of increases that will total more than $14 billion, according to a forecast released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst.
Billions of dollars for schools will likely be at stake on the 2016 ballot as well as pivotal campaigns for state Legislature and a question about union pensions. Meanwhile, the Capitol is expecting a robust debate about how schools are evaluated and courts will hear two lawsuits challenging the teachers union.
According to the most recent available information, California’s K-12 education spending lags the nation by almost any measure.