Thanks to Newsom and the unions closing the schools and stopping education (phony internet classes do not count as education, they were for profit only—of the teachers and the school districts), we now have an epidemic of students with PTSD, emotional and behavior problems, suicide thoughts, depression and desire to strike out at society. By isolating the kids for 18 months, it made sure kids lived in fear—now we will spend billions and a lifetime fixing what Newsom and the unions did in 18 months. That is a crime against humanity.
To make it worse, schools will be money to fight truancy—but no penalty if they fail. In other words, this is free money to be used to pay off unions—watch as actual attendance goes down—why show up to be bullied, taught hate and perversions?
“A newly introduced bill would change the current practice of basing state aid on attendance to one based on enrollment, thus giving schools money for kids that aren’t in the classroom. The legislation would, it’s been estimated, provide schools with an extra $3 billion a year, or roughly $500 per student.
Although the bill would require schools to spend at last half of the extra money on battling truancy, there’s no penalty for failing to bring the missing kids back into the classroom, which could exacerbate the already serious gap between enrollment and attendance.”
California’s school crisis gets short shrift
BY DAN WALTERS, CalMatters, 1/11/22
IN SUMMARY
California’s huge public school system is in crisis, with declining academic achievement and financial squeezes, but Gov. Gavin Newsom new budget gives it short shrift.
California has no shortage of critical issues – pandemic, water, housing and chronic poverty to name a few.
None, however, is more important to the state’s economic and societal future than shortcomings in its immense, 6 million-student public school system.
Even before COVID-19 struck the state two years ago, California’s overall standing in nationwide tests of academic achievement were embarrassingly low and the learning gap separating poor and English-learner students from their more privileged peers was embarrassingly wide.
The pandemic has made those negative conditions even worse, as the latest set of state academic tests underscores.
The “Smarter Balanced” tests of English skills and mathematics were suspended in 2020 as the schools closed their doors and shifted, rather clumsily, to distance learning. Last spring, the tests resumed but fewer than a quarter of 3.1 million students in grades 3-8 took them due to spotty attendance.
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Nevertheless, the sample was large enough to reveal that learning took a beating and Black and Latino students fell further behind white and Asian kids. High school graduation rates also declined, with those of Black and Latino students dropping the most.
Fewer than half of those tested met the standard in English language tests and scarcely a third did in mathematics.
The declines were not surprising because the students who needed help the most had the least access to online tools and their families were hit the hardest, both in medical and financial terms, as the pandemic surged.
The education system’s woes go beyond poor academic achievement, however. Enrollment was already drifting downward due to demographic factors, such as plummeting birthrates, and many local school systems were feeling the pinch because state aid was based on attendance.
Enrollment has declined even more in the last two years due to the pandemic, but the state continued to award state aid based on pre-pandemic data. That hold-harmless gesture is now ending, unless renewed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature, with negative consequences for many school systems, even though surging state revenues have resulted in large overall increases in state aid.
A newly introduced bill would change the current practice of basing state aid on attendance to one based on enrollment, thus giving schools money for kids that aren’t in the classroom. The legislation would, it’s been estimated, provide schools with an extra $3 billion a year, or roughly $500 per student.
Although the bill would require schools to spend at last half of the extra money on battling truancy, there’s no penalty for failing to bring the missing kids back into the classroom, which could exacerbate the already serious gap between enrollment and attendance.
