The Fate of Summer School in California Under Schwarzenegger’s Proposed Budget Cutbacks

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Lloyd Levine
Member
California State Assembly

[Editor’s note: Assemblymember Levine will join Dr. David Long, the Governor's Secretary of Education and other panelists today at the California state PTA convention in Long Beach, to discuss the proposed school budget cuts at a workshop called "Hot Topics of the Legislature. I’d like to be a fly on the wall for this one.]

CALIFORNIANS are gearing up for the dog days of summer at the beach, lounging in the bleacher seats at Dodger Stadium and in summer-school classrooms.

That's right, summer school - where many kids today are willing to give up their Boogie boards for books to improve a grade, jump on the math fast track or get physical education out of the way to take Advanced Placement chemistry in the fall.

For a good many California teens, summer school is usually the prep work needed to get into the college of their choice.

But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget - which cuts $4.8billion in education funding - is throwing a wrench into summer school, and it's not even June. Such slashing could cause big problems for college-bound students.

Some California school districts are already alerting their staffs that summer school will have fewer classes this year because of a bad state funding recipe. There are already on the books rules and restrictions that cover how school districts can spend their summer school money. When districts factor in the looming education budget cuts that Schwarzenegger is proposing, the summer-school resources get watered down. Unless school districts can extract the money from other places, many classes will be out this summer.

These cutbacks would come at the worst possible time, as the bar has never been set higher for students trying to get into college. Some students need to take summer-school classes in order to compete with UC-bound counterparts packing a 4.5 grade-point average.

There's a chain reaction to all of this. The governor's anticipated education cuts would also hit community colleges, so they might also not be able to offer summer-school enrichment courses for high school students. There is no certain fallback plan.

And the chain reaction continues into the regular school year. The governor's anticipated school cuts could cause class sizes to get larger. That means Advanced Placement classes in history, chemistry and others could be cut at some high schools because AP classes are traditionally smaller.