[Editor’s Note: Scott Zeidman sent this letter to Karen Bass (D-Culver City), Speaker of the state Assembly, yesterday afternoon.]
Speaker Bass:
We met briefly. My name is Scott Zeidman, and I am a member of the Culver City School Board.
I am also a graduate of Culver City High School, where I obtained an unbelievable education and had a fantastic high school experience. Culver City High School prepared me for my undergraduate years at Loyola Marymount University, and provided the solid foundation I used at the University of California, Davis School of Law.
I look back at my many years in public school and realize that I received a great education. I have two sons, ages 9 and 5. They are both in public schools in the Culver City Unified School District. I am committed to public schools.
However, I worry about the education that my sons, and the remaining 6,500 children in the Culver City School District, as well as the millions in other school districts throughout our state, will be getting if the proposed budget cuts become a reality.
We already made significant cuts in the Culver City Unified School District.
These cuts certainly had an adverse effect on our children's collective education.
Schools have already been cut $2.8 billion this year. The additional $9.7 billion cuts proposed for school districts will force much deeper cuts and have lasting and profound impacts on schools and students.
We need new revenues that are permanent.
Adopting temporary revenues only pushes the state’s fiscal problems out a few years into the future and creates serious levels of destabilization for state and local budget planning.
Proposals to impose a “hard” cap on state spending would lock education funding in California at this abysmally inadequate level. Even the current fiscal crisis does not justify imposing a fiscal strait-jacket on efforts to restore funding for California’s children.
School districts need full flexibility – including class-size reduction – to maximize local decision-making and allow districts to prioritize during the budget crisis.
Your help is needed immediately to stop the Legislature and Governor from approving a state budget that would enact measures that would lock education funding into perpetual mediocrity.
California already has some of the most overcrowded classrooms in the nation and the greatest shortages of librarians, counselors and other critical support staff.
Continuing to balance California's budget with a cuts-only approach to education severely hurts children and schools.
I understand that you attended Hamilton High School, a public school, and I'm sure that many of our lawmakers graduated from public schools as well.
Please help give our children the same opportunities that our parents, and our legislature, gave to us.
Sincerely,
Scott Zeidman, Culver City School Board
