Tom Heng, a transfer student at Santa Ana College, is one of the many students, workers and teachers affected by the California budget cuts to the state’s public education. As Tom said, “Classes and majors are getting cut…Some people drop out or make other sacrifices because of the tuition hikes.  People with busy schedules, such as many of us who have to work as well as go to school, will have a much harder time getting classes they can attend.” The cuts to the California education budget have not only resulted in the loss of jobs, but real day-to-day effects for the lives of many students, teachers and families.

Equal access to education is a crucial component of a just, democratic society. The state’s reaction to the recent economic crisis, however, threatens this access. In February 2009, The state of California cut $5.3 billion from K-12 education, $800 million from community colleges and $2 billion from the California State University System (CSU) and the UCs . Consequently, CSU will cut enrollment by 40,000 in the next two years and community colleges by 250,000.

Cuts like these demonstrate the low priority given to the education of our youth. A comparison of education with other aspects of the budget serves to further illustrate this. Consider the following: In the last three years, education spending in California has been reduced by 42%. California’s funding of Criminal Justice (prisons and police), however, has grown by 126% since 1984. Funding for higher education has shrunk over the same period by 12%. The state legislature cut $9 billion from education for 2009-2010, but the state would be $8.4 billion richer if its corporate tax rate were what it was in 1981. During the most recent budget crisis, the state legislature passed even further tax giveaways to Californian mega-corporations at a cost of $2.5 billion in lost tax revenue per year. This is not an issue merely of a lack of money, but also a policy over time that prioritizes corporate profit over equal access to quality schools, incarceration over education.

Equal access to quality public education is prevented by two other main problems besides reduced spending on education. The first is that the budget cuts in K-12 education unequally affect poor school districts. The use of property taxes to partially fund public primary and secondary education has left districts that have lower property values much less able to cope with cuts in services than more affluent neighborhoods. For example, 66% of principles in “high-poverty” schools have recently reported layoffs of teachers compared to 15% of principles in middle-class and upper-class districts. On the college level, another issue of concern is that access doled out according to ability to pay is inherently unequal access. Put simply, public education is getting more expensive and thus becoming less viable for a percentage of our population. For example, CSU fees have increased 32% over the past year and a total of 182% since 2002. Community college fees have increased 30% this year and UC fees have increased 44% since Fall 2009. These cuts will make it even harder for many low-income students to get a four-year degree.

Many students and affiliated workers and teachers have risen in resistance to these threats to education and many students are now facing expulsion. As Stanford students who value education and currently live in California, we should do our best to, at the very least, educate ourselves about what is going on in this state. As current residents, we are all implicated to a certain degree in the state’s actions.

Jenna Queenan ’11