Getting Involved

Your urgent help is requested. I am appealing directly to you to help our profession through this current budget crisis. Please participate in the following to show policy-makers how concerned we are about the current state of education in California:

·         This website advocates closing the prop 13 loophole. Since the late 1970s the tax burden has been shifted from industrial properties (43%) to residential properties (57%). By closing this and all corporate loopholes, the state could raise an estimated $16 billion per year. By signing the website’s petition you are sending a powerful message to our policy-makers.

2) Join Californian’s For Democracy (www.californiansfordemocracy.com)

·         This website offers opportunities for raising awareness for changing our state’s budgeting process. California is the openly state to require a 2/3rds vote to pass a budget. Such a supermajority stifles democracy, causes gridlock, and leads to economic chaos. Join this cause to change the current un-democratic practice of a 2/3rds majority. 

·         There are 6.5 million Californians without health coverage and in your most recent paycheck you have seen how much your health costs have increased. The state Senate has passed a single-payer system. Ask your assembly representative to approve the bill and ask Governor Schwarzenegger to sign it into law. This bill will cut costs for school districts across the state.

·         Contact your representative to endorse a progressive tax policy: In 1993 the highest tax bracket was 11%, today it is 9.3%. The wealthiest 1% of Californians average $1.6 million a year in income. Raising the top rate back to 11% would bring in $5 billion in revenue. In 1980, California corporations contributed nearly 15% of the state budget; today they pay 11%. Closing all tax loopholes would raise an estimated $16 billion a year.

5) Ask the Governor to restore the $1.5 billion he removed from the education budget.

·         Using accounting gimmicks (changing the sales tax on gasoline to an excise tax, for example, allows the state to not count that revenue in the general fund) the governor is slashing $1.5 from the education budget. Ask the governor to keep his promise and not cut education funding.

·         Contact you state representatives (and President Obama) and urge them to only support school reforms that are research-based. The current Race to the Top initiative seeks to make vast changes to the field of education. Few of these changes address the needs of our schools directly, but rather make for good political brinkmanship. See CFT.org for more information. 

·         The CFT, along with many of its allies, is kicking off a march from Los Angeles through the Central Valley to Sacramento to raise awareness about education issues. Please let me know if you’d like to participate in the march as it approaches Sacramento and/or if you’d like to participate in the large demonstration in Sacramento in April.