This story was reported for the San Diego News Network on March 16, 2010.
As thousands of California teachers receive layoff notices, talks of education spending compared to prison spending, and health care reform continue in the Golden State.
If you happen to consider this just more somber news, check out SDNN’s coverage of St. Paddy Day’s events and party your sorrows away. The spending could also help the California economy. (I’m joking, but not really.)
Until the revelry Wednesday though, here is your dose of CBCD.
Pink slips: Nearly 22,000 California teachers could be without a job next year if state budget problems persist.
21,905 pink slips have been handed out statewide before Tuesday’s legal deadline for districts to send preliminary layoff notices.
The biggest question is just how many teachers will actually be let go.
Last year, 26,000 teachers received pink slips and about 60 percent of those people were eventually laid off.
This year’s final head count depends on the state budget to be adopted for the upcoming fiscal year.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell expects this year’s actual job losses to be high, given budget problems and a smaller pool of education stimulus money available from the federal government.
The state’s public schools employ nearly 307,000 K-12 teachers, according to the state Department of Education. About 7 percent of those teachers have received pink slips.
Prisons vs. Education: As California’s fiscal dilemma continues, talks of the prison budget compared to that of education continues. In a Tuesday rant by Dick Price on the online media Web site BeyondChron, he digs deeper into all the numbers.
“To get a handle on the damage California’s current approach to incarceration is having on its citizens, consider this: In a recent 23-year period, California erected 23 prisons — one a year, each costing roughly $100 million dollars annually to operate, with both Democratic and Republican governors occupying the statehouse — at the same time that it added just one campus to its vaunted university system, UC Merced.”
Price also writes that the majority of other states have invested more into its education system than the Golden State.
“Since the late 1970s, California has fallen from first in the nation in per-pupil spending, nearly to the bottom at number 48. With California’s annual budget falling from $103 billion three years ago to $80 billion currently during what’s often called the Great Recession, schools — including the world class University of California system — continue to face deep cuts in funding, fewer teaching positions, and a reduced ability to educate students.”
Uninsured Californians: A new UCLA study shows the number of uninsured Californians is climbing with the increase of layoffs and the deepening recession.
Appearing in The Los Angeles Times, the reporter writes a jump of nearly 2 million uninsured people in 2009 from two years ago.
“Nearly 1 in 4 Californians under age 65 had no health insurance last year, according to a new report, as soaring unemployment propelled vast numbers of once-covered workers into the ranks of the uninsured.
The state’s uninsured population jumped to 8.2 million in 2009, up from 6.4 million in 2007, marking the highest number over the last decade, investigators from UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research said.”
The Times reporter notes that though the federal leaders are pushing for health care reform, state officials may cut more to public health services.
“The new UCLA estimates arrive as President Obama and congressional Democrats scramble this week to finalize an agreement on healthcare reform. Democrats who are pressing the overhaul say it would expand health insurance to tens of millions of uninsured people across the country.
Yet even as leaders in Washington seek to expand coverage, California officials are wrestling with budget proposals by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to cut or eliminate publicly-funded insurance programs that critics say cover more than 2.5 million low-income children and their parents — some of whom lost coverage because of layoffs.”
Associated Press contributed to this report. Hoa Quach is the political editor for the San Diego News Network.