http://www.schwarzenegger.com/dev333/news.asp?id=198


April 20, 2005

GOVERNOR DISCUSSES PROGRESS AND NEED FOR REFORMS AT NEWSPAPER CONVENTION


Today in San Francisco, Governor Schwarzenegger spoke to members of the Newspaper Association of America at their national convention. "When I came into office, our state was in deep trouble," the Governor said. "We were on the verge of bankruptcy and businesses and jobs were leaving the state. And worst of all, the people had lost faith in the leadership of their government."

The Governor spoke of the progress California has made since he took office, including uniting Democrats and Republicans to achieve workers' compensation reform, passing Propositions 57 and 58 to get the state's financial house in order, enacting a budget that did not raise Californians' taxes and gains in job growth and the state economy. "As a matter of fact, our economy has come back in a big way," the Governor said. "Last year we added 250,000 new jobs here. And this year already we added 54,000 new jobs."

On the topic of schools, Governor Schwarzenegger noted the $2.9 billion spending increase, the largest in his budget, he proposed for education and pointed out the need to make changes in a system that is failing many of California's students. "We spend $50 billion on education - almost half of our entire state budget - and this year we will increase spending by nearly $3 billion, by far the largest increase of any program. But look what we get for our money: thirty percent of our kids don’t graduate, hundreds of schools are failing and 50 percent of the kids perform below grade level." The Governor emphasized the need to reward great teachers by linking compensation to student performance, the importance of expanding charter schools and vocational education, and the value of allowing schools to use competitive bidding for non-classroom services like maintenance and transportation.

Governor Schwarzenegger also discussed the recall election and the mandate it gave him to enact true reform. "This state does not belong to the politicians or to the special interests or to the unions or to the press," he said. "This state belongs to the people. And to them the recall was not a circus or a side-show. It was about ending politics-as-usual, making government fix its own problems and having government work for the people once again.” The Governor spoke to Newspaper Association of America members at their annual convention. The convention is widely considered the major newspaper gathering of the year. The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) is a nonprofit organization representing the newspaper industry and over 2,000 newspapers in the United States and Canada. Members account for nearly 90 percent of the daily circulation in the United States and include a wide range of non-daily U.S. newspapers.

________________________________________________________________________


No thank you Governor Schwarzenegger! Give us back the $2 billion dollars you promised to pay back. Our kids are "our" special interest!

KT

It sounds like arnold is doing what Margaret Thatcher, former PM of Britain, tried to do. Get the bright and rich kids all in the same schools, getting great results, with well paid and happy teachers, and let the rest fight it out with suicidally depressed teachers, underpaid, doing the work that police should do. You make a system for the poorer ones and another system for the richer ones. When the poorest ones system fails you can say that public education has failed and make it all fee-paying. That way all the rich kids can go to the expensive good schools and all the rest go to cheap bad schools.

Oh, yes, this sounds familiar. It is part of the greater Bush agenda !

- blame the teachers for children with learning disabilities and poor home situations

- give money to private (called "charter") schools

- outsource jobs so that the staff employees will not get proper benefits (if any) and will be underpaid

Take a look at what has happened to Texas and FLorida schools (George & Jeb) and see just how successful this approach is, Arnold !

"and the value of allowing schools to use competitive bidding for non-classroom services like maintenance and transportation."

As I recall, a nine year old child in Florida was kidnapped and brutally molested then buried alive by a person who did one of those "outsource jobs" at her school. Our maintanence employees in California are fingerprinted just like the rest of us, (certificated and classified). You can't have just anyone working around children in schools!

PARENTS NEED TO FEEL COMFORTABLE THAT THEY ARE SENDING THEIR CHILDREN TO A SAFE SCHOOL!

http://www.cta.org/News/2005/20050420_1.htm


Governor Again Misses Mark With 'Combat Pay' Remark – Our Public Schools Are Not War Zones
Schwarzenegger Has No Real Plan to Improve Schools, Help Students
 
Return to News Menu [News Archive]
 
April 20, 2005
 
BURLINGAME – California's public schools aren't combat zones and the governor's latest comments about "combat pay" for teachers are not only insulting, but also show he has no understanding of what our schools need to succeed, California Teachers Association President Barbara E. Kerr said today.
 
"The governor's comments make it seem like these schools are war zones, and that's insulting and degrading to our kids, teachers and their communities," Kerr said. "He is out of touch with what our students need."
 
Governor Schwarzenegger fails to grasp that pay is only one part of the picture for our schools of greatest need, Kerr said. "Instead of addressing the state's education funding crisis and keeping his promises to fully fund our school system, the governor is wasting time on a political agenda that won't help improve our schools one bit. To attract quality teachers to these schools, we need smaller class sizes, adequate textbooks, and clean and safe learning environments."
 
Meanwhile, California ranks 44th in the nation in per-pupil funding and is spending more than $600 below the national average per student, according to Education Week and RAND Corp. reports released in January. Teachers across the state are united in opposing the governor's political agenda of attacking due process rights for educators, breaking his promise to fully fund education, and destroying current education funding guarantees in voter-approved
Proposition 98.
 
"His merit pay initiative is doomed," Kerr said. "His broken promises on funding and his spending cap proposal to weaken Proposition 98 would mean $25,000 less for every classroom in this state. That's not reform, that's hurting our students and schools."

###
 
The 335,000-member CTA is affiliated with the 2.7 million-member National Education Association.

KT


:momsday:

April 28, 2005
George Skelton:
Capitol Journal
After Reneging on His Promise to Schools, Schwarzenegger's Marks Slip
 

 
What started out as mere scuff marks on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's battle armor has worsened into damaging corrosion.
The scuff marks were reported here three months ago, based on a statewide poll by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. It showed that Schwarzenegger still was popular — 60% approved of his job performance, only 33% disapproved — but Democrats were starting to sour on him. They particularly objected to his education policies.

 Since then, the governor's overall approval rating has been falling in all public polls.
Now a new survey by the policy institute finds, for the first time, that significantly more people disapprove of Schwarzenegger's job performance than approve of it: 40% approve, 50% disapprove. Even among likely voters, who tend to be more conservative than the overall population, just 45% approve and 47% disapprove.
The poll points to a key reason for Schwarzenegger's slippage: Those education scuff marks have corroded his popularity.
He still gets roughly the same bad marks on education that he got in January: Only 28% approve of the way he is handling K-12 schools; 51% disapprove. But, unlike before, the ed ratings are substantially affecting his overall grade. Of those who flunk his school performance, 79% also disapprove of his overall job-handling. In January, only 51% did.
"There's a direct correlation," says PPIC pollster Mark Baldassare. "Schools have become symptomatic of people's fundamental concerns about his leadership style and abilities.
"People were giving Schwarzenegger the benefit of the doubt, even though they disagreed with him on education. Now, education is turning out to be a leading indicator of how they feel about his style of leadership."
There's also certainly a direct correlation between Schwarzenegger's plummeting popularity and the $5 million in TV attack ads run against him by the California Teachers Assn. and its education allies. The spots have pummeled Schwarzenegger for breaking his word to schools. Basically, he borrowed $2 billion from the school kitty to finance other state expenses and now isn't repaying it, as promised.
The governor is proposing an extra $2.9 billion for schools, but that's $2 billion short of what they're owed — based on the deal he cut with them.
"I sat at a table with the governor and his finance people and representatives of the education coalition, and we reached an agreement," says Carla Nino of Woodland Hills, president of the state PTA. "I heard him say he'd pay it back this year. I believed him. He was a new governor. You have to give people the benefit of their word. Which is why we're so upset now.
"I have to tell you, we feel like we were suckered."
PTA members have been dogging Schwarzenegger all over California, protesting his policies. So have teachers, nurses, firefighters and cops, specifically targeting his recently scuttled initiative to end traditional pension plans for new public employees. This also surely has damaged the governor.
Today, hundreds of parents from throughout the state plan to rally against Schwarzenegger outside the Capitol.
"I'm a Democrat who voted for Schwarzenegger," says Wendy Bokota, an Irvine PTA activist and mother of two elementary school children. "Like everybody else, I voted without being really informed about the issues. I believed people when they said Gray Davis really was causing problems. I thought Schwarzenegger had the ability to make change — and he does, but he's trying to do it on the backs of education.
"I thought repealing the vehicle license fee sounded great and would save me a lot of money, but I didn't understand the problems it was going to cause the state budget."
It's costing the state $4 billion annually in tax revenue.
Schwarzenegger did keep his promise to cut the car tax and not raise other taxes. But to do that, he chose to break his word to schools.
As previous governors have found, it's dangerous to fight schools — especially the teachers union. Calling the CTA and the PTA "special interests" may be accurate, but voters aren't moved. They just shrug and focus on their kids' educations.
And currently, according to the Baldassare poll, 52% of Californians think there's a "big problem" with the quality of elementary and high schools in this state.
This should be the clincher for Schwarzenegger: More people trust Democratic legislators to make budget choices for schools (38%) than trust him (24%).
There is some good news for the governor in this survey: 64% agree with him that teachers should be paid based on merit rather than seniority. And 54% like his proposal to increase from two to five the years of experience required for teacher tenure. Both ideas are ballot initiatives he has promoted.
But his merit pay concept is so controversial and impractical that Schwarzenegger unofficially has given up on it. The tenure idea is hardly worthy of the word "reform" — and certainly not a costly special election. The governor's only other school "reform" is to pare back the Proposition 98 funding guarantee.
This is not cutting it with Californians.
Schwarzenegger needs to repay schools the $2 billion, even if it means raising taxes.
He should negotiate real education reform with legislators — whom the people, after all, trust more.
And he needs to forget about a $70-million special election and spend that money on low-performing schools.
This will help clean up the corrosion.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.

For some, it's combat. I love it too much to think of it any anything more than a part of myself, and I'm not at war with myself. Agree- keep your combat pay; just give me what I need to do what's best for my students.

Thanks for this thread, KT

Revised budget proposal due in mid-May

The battle against the governor's initiatives is overshadowing efforts to forge a new state budget for the 2005-06 fiscal year.

The Legislature has been reviewing the proposal unveiled in January, but the discussion will turn serious on or about May 10 when the governor issues updated estimates of state revenues and revised proposals on how to spend them. Sacramento insiders call it the "May Revision."

June 15 is the constitutional deadline for lawmakers to send the governor their draft spending plan and June 30 is the deadline for the governor to sign it, although, in recent years, both deadlines have been missed more often than made.

Because state revenues have been rising, a major element of the discussion is expected to be the governor's refusal to repay public education more than $2 billion he withheld last year. Public school supporters are saying rising revenues are providing more than enough funding for the governor to honor his promise and comply with Proposition 98's minimum funding requirements for 2005-06 as well.

Len Feldman

How very clever- these sagacious insiders creating such a novel name: The May Revision.

$2,000,000,000.00 would buy the books we weren't able to buy last year. Now the history books might be recent enough to mention the War in Bosnia. It would also mean that some teachers will get a salary increase that might bring their income up to the point it was before it was cut because of the money their districts didn't get last year.

Teachers getting paid? Again how novel, how clever!

Getting paid???? What's that? We got a salary decrease two years ago when we had to start paying the increase of our health benefits. The kids are getting shortchanged while the money goes to Bush's war chest.

KT

Ouch ! CA always had an excellent system when I was youngster and now the state is spending per-pupil like Mississippi or something. Unreal

This thread got me curious. Found this site:

http://counts.edweek.org/sreports/qc03/tem...7rcard_text.h22

Don't know if it is considered a legit source by teachers- but, wow, they
give letter grades to states in different categories..... check it out.

California Report Card

(Click on the table names to see the 50-state tables; click on grades to see the data behind them.)

Student Achievement
(NAEP)

4th graders proficient
or above math (2000)
15%

8th graders proficient
or above in math (2000)
18%

4th graders proficient
or above in science (2000)
14%

8th graders proficient
in science (2000)
15%


Standards and Accountability B+

Improving Teacher Quality B

School Climate C

Resources: Adequacy D

Resources: Equity: C+




Florida Report Card

(Click on the table names to see the 50-state tables; click on grades to see the data behind them.)

Student Achievement
(NAEP)

4th graders proficient
or above math (2000)
?

8th graders proficient
or above in math (2000)
?

4th graders proficient
or above in science (2000)
?

8th graders proficient
in science (2000)
?


Standards and Accountability: A

Improving Teacher Quality: C-

School Climate: ?

Resources: Adequacy D+

Resources: Equity* B

WOW! This is a powerful column! I like the way Michael Hiltzik thinks and writes!

KT


******************************************************************


http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-...-home-headlines

May 26, 2005 latimes.com

Michael Hiltzik:
Golden State
Touting Initiatives, Eschewing Principles
As I half-snoozed through a Dodger broadcast the other night, my attention was suddenly arrested by a commercial for one of those quick-cash services, featuring the prominent former gubernatorial candidate Gary Coleman.

"Recently, I needed some cash fast," Coleman said, before assuring viewers that he had only to pick up the phone, and "$10,000 was in my account the next day."

That's when I realized that the sponsor had hired the wrong California politician as its spokesmodel. The guy they should have signed up is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is so desperate for money to fund his new initiative campaign that he had to fly clear out of state last week to siphon it from the trousers of a gaggle of wealthy pals.

Possibly all the wells in California have been tapped out by Schwarzenegger's two-year fundraising spree, which has yielded more than $30 million in political donations. The goal of his recent tour, which stopped in Chicago, Dallas and three Florida cities, was to prime the pump for a new $30-million initiative campaign aimed at a special election he's considering calling for November.

Thus Schwarzenegger once again showed how thoroughly he can corrupt the state's initiative process. Chicago real estate men, Texas oilmen and Florida time-share kings all ponied up, although they swore it was only to prove their devotion to his vision of political reform for California.

In reality, there is scarcely a political or moral principle that this tour didn't compromise. Consider the contortions it forced upon Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who played Damon to Schwarzenegger's Pythias during its Florida leg. Bush had to deflect questions about why he was helping his fellow Republican governor promote a ballot initiative that would hand over legislative redistricting to an independent commission, given that (1) he has opposed a virtually identical measure drafted by Florida good-government groups, and (2) he supports an overall weakening of Florida's ballot initiative process, which has produced numerous citizen mandates he dislikes.

"I support his efforts to bring California out of its morass," announced Bush, the governor of a state that seems to produce new morasses daily.

Although Schwarzenegger's latest round of alms-begging aims to defray the costs of the incessant television ads that will pass for public debate in the months leading up to November's balloting, it will do nothing to help California's county and city taxpayers shoulder the estimated $80-million cost of actually holding the election. (This may explain why the governor is customarily described in the newspapers as "threatening" to call a special election.)

Let's examine what this money would buy. Of the three initiatives so far likely to qualify for November, this column has already noted that the so-called Live Within Our Means Act is a sham, an ostensible spending control measure that would only make the budget harder for lawmakers to manage.

The redistricting proposal, meanwhile, is a product of the governor's pique at voters who ignored his endorsements of a clutch of Republican legislative candidates last November and reelected every Democratic incumbent.

The third measure is designed to prohibit granting public school teachers tenure until they serve a district for five years, up from two.

Like so many of Schwarzenegger's "reforms," this is a slogan masquerading as policy — and bad policy, at that.

"From a political perspective, anything like this has legs," says William Slotnick, an education expert at the Community Training and Assistance Center, a Boston organization that promotes school and community development reform. "It presents the governor as being tough on accountability."

But it's typical of Schwarzenegger's approach to governing, in that it's thoroughly irrelevant to what really goes on inside the schoolhouse. As Slotnick observes, one of the biggest problems school boards face today is a shortage of teachers. As many as 50% of new teachers leave the field in their first three years. (One reason may be that novices often get assigned the most difficult schools and classrooms, where they're often stranded by their administrators without training or resources to cope.)

California school districts, which already face huge problems in recruiting and keeping faculty, plainly haven't been clamoring for a tool to help them dump young teachers even faster.

Schwarzenegger appears to have no conception of what the public schools do need — thoughtful leadership in Sacramento to help them address such systemic problems as lack of resources and supplies; minimal cooperation among teachers, administrators, parents and political leaders; and a diverse school-age population that creates unique costs and challenges.

Schwarzenegger treats education policy as a cudgel to swing at his most vociferous critics, the teacher unions. That's why his school reform proposals never amount to more than punitive attacks on teachers, and why the very title of this initiative is a sick joke: the Put the Kids First Act. Schwarzenegger's reform goals are lying in smithereens at his feet because he always puts his ego first.

This is the sort of thing the governor's loyal contributors from out of state are trying to foist on California. He should tell them to keep their money. After all, if he's really in dire need of cash, Gary Coleman can give him a number to call.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Golden State appears every Monday and Thursday. You can reach Michael Hiltzik at golden.state@latimes.com and read his previous columns at latimes.com/hiltzik.

This is a month old. Has the decline in his popularity continued?

KT.... how did the rally go in LA ? or did you already post that somehwere else?

Here is the link for the pictures Pie. I'm not sure where that thread went. It might be under misc. junk....what do they call it......"cafe something"...

http://www.cta.org/Features/StateBudgetCri..._LA/Image01.htm

I loved it Pie! I'm sure there will be more. This Gov. isn't backing down. I hope he stops the name calling. That in itself would be refreshing.

KT

OT...my trip to S.D. wore me out. Then this morning I got the bad news that my aunt in Laguna passed away. I may have to take a "time out" to get my head back on straight again before I do any serious posting here.