Education Wins and Losses in the California State Budget for the 2007-08 School Year

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Jack O’Connell
California Superintendent of Public Instruction

I am so pleased that California now has a spending plan in place for this fiscal year that protects the Proposition 98 guarantee and provides a cost-of-living increase for school programs. I applaud the Governor and the Legislature for making education a priority in what was a very difficult budget year.

I am glad that the budget includes a much-needed 4.7-cent increase in the school meal reimbursement rate aimed at improving the nutritional quality of meals served to students through a ban on trans fats and deep-fried foods. For many students in our state, the meal they get at school is the one healthy meal they can count on each day.

I appreciate the increased funding in the budget for career technical education programs and will continue to work with the Legislature and the Governor to ensure that the CTE programs offered in our state also provide academic rigor needed to truly prepare all students for a range of opportunities once they leave high school.

I remain very disappointed that the final budget agreement did not include funding to support local districts for collecting and maintaining the quality individual student data that our state needs to track graduation and dropout rates and to better measure student performance over time. While the budget does include an appropriation to develop the technical infrastructure for CALPADS - the state's developing longitudinal student data tracking system - school district participation in CALPADS is vital for the program's success. I will continue to advocate for funding to support local data collection and maintenance to improve the accuracy of student data. This information is needed to effectively evaluate the success of education programs and target our state's resources most effectively.