If you listen to our Governor, California is making record-breaking investments in schools.  If you listen to our school districts, California is about to fall off a fiscal cliff next year— and they can’t afford to give us raises.  Which is it? I looked at the eduction budget, the Governor’s summary, EdSource, Ed101 and elsewhere to figure it out.

• Because the incomes of the wealthy rose, a lot, during the pandemic (Wait a minute… What??) California took in record tax revenues from 2020 to 2022, and Proposition 98 meant that the state had to increase funding to education proportionate to that. This was certainly Prop 98’s moment to shine.
• Of the new money, $14.2 billion was allocated to permanent ongoing funding and 16.6 billion to temporary funds, most with a spending window of 3-5 years.
• The permanent funding included increases to LCFF, the base funding for school districts, and to after-school and summer programs, Kindergarten and Transitional Kindergarten, special education, transportation, and school meals. The temporary funding went to ‘learning recovery’, arts and music, ‘green school bus’ grants, community schools, and more. There were also payments to a rainy-day fund to prop up funding in low-revenue years.
• State tax revenue will be less for 2023, but there is no reason for school districts to expect their ongoing state funding to drop next year. The education budget next year won’t have all that one-time money— but  their permanent funding won’t change, and they will still be spending the one-time funds from this year.  
• The permanent funding is permanent.  A series of low-revenue years could cause the state to cut back funding and ‘owe it to the schools later’ (as they did in the Great Recession) but the state is committed by law to the new funding level. The increases outpace inflation— LCFF tracks it, but the other increases in permanent funding come on top of that.
• The LCFF funding will be ongoing and will be supported by the ‘rainy day’ fund if needed. Permanent funding has already increased almost 20% over three years, and school employees have not gotten corresponding pay increases.  
• Conclusion: District warnings about a fiscal cliff are just cover for trying not to spend the increased permanent funding they have already gotten.

As a result of these three years, California is finally not near the bottom of the fifty states in adjusted per-student funding, moving from near-bottom to near-middle. Nothing to be proud of, but trailing in the dust for thirty years has not been fun. 

But we can also look at the Governor’s and Legislature’s ‘record school funding’ in another way: California incomes and wealth have risen faster than taxes and therefore faster than school funding.  As a percentage of  state GDP, school funding is at its lowest level since 1948. That’s a different kind of record spending.

David  de Leeuw, OEA retired