A Modest Solution

Our board members will be forced into the untenable, miserable position of having to make additional cuts to the MDUSD budget. I do not envy their position, nor the pressure they will feel from panicked parents who see our infrastructure crumble in front of our eyes. As a parent of three children, one with disabilities, I feel this pull and tug daily. Yet the child I represent at board meetings, state budget meetings and in the community is my child with a disability. If you have a child with a disability, you know why. The threat that all children face now is not new to us. Our kids cost more. That is reason enough for resentment. 

Here are some objections and refuting talking points I am keeping in mind as I work with the board, neighbors, friends and legislators to advocate for our students and help others 'walk a mile in our kids walkers.'

The first and most important point is this. We are a community. Either we serve students with disabilities or we hang a sign at the district border that says "We don't serve your kind here." If we do decide to do the right thing, the civilized and ethical thing, then we should do it with as much pride as we do, say, football, band, robotics, and Honors courses. Right now we are uncommitted. We have parents irate that students might have to pay a fee to play extracurricular sports. At the same time, some of our students have to sit on the sidelines at recess because they cannot get to the play structures. We have a district that has spent tens of thousands of dollars in court, losing the argument that playgrounds don't have to be accessible to all students.Where are the indignant parents speaking for the disabled? Arguing that special education costs too much, not crying that those kids can't play. What does the board say? Nothing in defense of our kids, no apology for the playground structures, no shame at the fiscal waste. 

1. Misconception: We need to cut spending. The governor and Republican minority claim we can cut spending and get out of the budget crisis. This is a revenue problem, not a spending problem. A majority of voters locally and throughout the state support tax increases. School districts have cut to the bone. The state needs to raise more money for the services we, proudly and rightly provide our citizens. We used to be an educational leader, now our per student spending matches our test scores: lowest in the country. If we want a first class educational system, we need to spend at least as much as New York. That would require doubling our per pupil spending and place us roughly in the top third of states.  Until then, we get what we pay for. 
   
2. Misconception: Special education is too expensive! Parents of regular education students have noticed that special education takes up 23% of the total budget. At about 11% of the total population, that means our kids with special needs are roughly twice as expensive as regular ed kids. Actually, 2:1 expenses is a really good ratio. While we have some students who require minimal services, I know that many children are more severe. Mine for instance has an aide, a nurse, and occupational therapist, speech therapist, assitive technology specialist, physical therapist, computer and a class of eight. Her education is more than 10 times what her sister costs the district. We have managed to keep our program costs reasonably low and our services for special education students are something we should be as proud of as our sports and Advanced Placement services. 
   
3. Partial truth: There is a lot of fraud, waste and abuse in special education! The district should be forthcoming about waste and abuse. It has spent significant sums of money in court fighting  students' rights. The money now allocated to resurface playgrounds is an example. Had those been properly installed, or had the district remedied the improper installation at the request of the Spieler class rather than going to court to appeal, that money wasted would now be available to hire teachers. The district should be as compliant with law as possible; it is the right, and least expensive thing to do.

Systematic abuse, not excessive service for disabled students, is the norm. Remember the nineties and early 2000's? Gosh, life was good! Unemployment was low, housing prices were rising fast, the governor still had seven Hummers. That was the economic context under which the consent decree in our district came into being. When money was flowing and business was booming, the district was forced to admit systematically violating the rights of students with disabilities. They agreed under a consent decree monitored by the federal court to set aside 20 million dollars over ten years-- a scant 2 million a year-- to remedy their ways. During the consent decree they managed to waste additional money fighting students with disabilities, wasting staggering sums of money and then having to do what the law required anyway. Now that times are bad, they say they cannot afford to special education. What's new? The Nazi's used this same propaganda to incite support of forced sterilization and euthanasia of the disabled. No one ever wants to spend money on children with disabilities. That is why we have IDEA and ADA. Otherwise, we might eat our young when we got hungry enough. 

Lest we forget

Recently in my home school district members of the board have been rallying to "study special education" to make sure it is "cost effective." Members of the community, alarmed by the violent cuts proposed to the education budget by our so called governor have been calling for cuts to special education.

How predictable that under stress communities would go after the weak and disabled as scapegoats. This same community that twice has refused to tax itself to pay for the education our own children. Are our citizens taking their torches and pitchforks out to the homes of the baby boomers who have benefitted from prop 13 all these years? Many of them paying less in property taxes all year than many of our young families pay in mortgage each month? Are they going after the governor, who proposed the cuts, or our Republican legislators who have taken a blood oath to not raise any new revenue, no matter what? Do they think that, maybe, under the circumstances that athletes could pay for extra curricular activities so that children with disabilities could have nurses, aides to change their diapers or speech therapy?

No, they go after children with disabilities. "Get the gimps! They cost to damn much!"

Americans after WWII love to vilify the Nazis. What has always scared me about Nazi Germany is not how alien it is, but how human they were, how recognizable. In that great Christian democracy (yes, Hitler appealed to Christians, especially Protestants, AND he was elected. Look it up) in that great democracy, when times got hard and Germans were standing in bread lines, it was the disabled they went after first. The tens of thousands of people with disabilities who were murdered were just the rehearsal for the Jewish Holocaust. They are not even remembered. And, it began here, in the States, in California. What scares me about Nazi Germany is how human they were, and how human we all still are. 

The following is from the National Holocaust Museum site:

Popular films such as Das Erbe ("Inheritance") helped build public support for government policies by stigmatizing the mentally ill and the handicapped and highlighting the costs of care. School mathematics books posed such questions as: "The construction of a lunatic asylum costs 6 million marks. How many houses at 15,000 marks each could have been built for that amount?" (emphasis added).

Nazi Germany was not the first or only country to sterilize people considered "abnormal." Before Hitler, the United States led the world in forced sterilizations. Between 1907 and 1939, more than 30,000 people in twenty-nine states were sterilized, many of them unknowingly or against their will, while they were incarcerated in prisons or institutions for the mentally ill. Nearly half the operations were carried out in California. 

A last thought from EUGENE V. DEBS

"Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man's business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ''Am I my brother's keeper?'' That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.

Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death."

"The generosity of the voters"

Yesterday I went to Sacramento to speak to the legislative budget committee on what the committee chair sarcastically called "the governor's revised revision of the May revise" of the budget. 

The room was packed, standing room only, and the line went out the hall. During the public comment period, which lasted well over an hour, I joined citizen after citizen in appeals to our legislators. Each of us begging them not to cut education in our state further, describing the crippling blows our local schools and services have taken. No one spoke in favor of smaller government, less taxes or more cuts to education or health and human services. Yet the majority sat powerless to act, because of the tyranny of a few ideologues who have sworn a blood oath with their party to raise no new revenue, no matter what. 

In California, it takes a two thirds vote to levy any new tax. In spite of a 59% vote in favor of new taxes in our district, we cannot raise money to stem the hemorage created by the violent slashing of the state budget. People are literally jobless, homeless and hungry,  yet they sit smug and satisfied to do more harm.

One Republican member asked about the fraud, waste and abuse in In Home Supportive Services for the disabled that were, in his words "taking advantage of the generosity of the taxpayers." To him, I say this:

•  These services are so hard to get, I can't imagine fraud waste and abuse in the system. If there is, you risk killing the patient trying to excise the last of the cancer. Seriously, how much more can you spend trying to prevent unnecessary expenditures? 
  
• Second, charity and generosity are neither if they are given with resentment and used to shame the recipient. Generosity and charity exalt the giver and the receiver. That which you do unto the least of these...
  
• Third, and most importantly, programs for the disabled are not built by generosity, they are built by wisdom. You are likely to need these one day. 

As one great legislator once said, you will never be black, you will never be a woman, but you may easily become disabled on your way home. 

Many people have told me that my daughter was born so that I could learn-- if there is a force out there that guides the life experiences we have in order that we may learn compassion, humility, and generosity first hand, may that force bring those lessons to the Republican party of California. And may no one else need suffer while they are learning. 

California's deep cuts to SpED

The governor that recalled a governor because the budget in California was not balanced cannot balance the budget. Things have become incredibly chaotic under the Governator than they ever were under Pete Wilson. 

Just last week, school districts, which compose their budgets for the 08-09 school year in June (six months ago), were told that they had to make additional cuts for this year. That means they have to figure out how to unspend money already spent. This after making deep cuts for the current year last spring. (Confused? That is because the whole process does not make sense-- does your paycheck get revised after it is in the bank?)

 

Who is in charge up there? Why are Californians not storming the capitol? 

 

What this means in the real world, not the land of magical thinking that Schwatzenager seems to occupy, is that classes are being combined mid-year, assistants, nurses, speech therapists are being fired mid-year and schools that somehow managed to hang onto music and athletics are losing them mid-year. One child said to the board: It seems like we just got music back, and now you are taking it away again! 

 

Last night, our board had to figure out how to make an additional 16 million dollars worth of cuts. Line by line, they went through the budget. News flash! Education is not a huge wasteful enterprise, not some pork barrel project. It is actually a pretty lean, efficient system. Well, lean. It would be more efficient with more money, actually.  So, line by line, the community looked for the corporate jet and the martini lunches, the tax sheltered golf games, the trips to conferences at exotic resorts. They just are not there. The corporate holiday party for teachers at my child's school was a box of fudge and a thank you card brought by parents and a pot luck lunch brought by teachers.  

So what they cut is jobs.

And how is laying off all of these people-- groundskeepers, custodians, carpenters, music teachers, coaches, occupational therapists, speech therapists, nurses, teachers' aides-- how exactly does that help our state economy? Now we have more people needing unemployment, in danger of losing their homes... how does that help? 

 

The mantra of the right that we have a spending problem is just getting to threadbare. The whole party wants to patch the holes in their seats. They don't seem to realize they are wearing the emperor's clothes and there is nothing to patch.

 

As a California home owner (there are still some left) our family pays less in property taxes than the state pays per year to educate two typically developing children. We have three kids, one with special needs. Those taxes need to also cover water systems, fire services, hiway patrol, 911. In short, we make a profit on our taxes and our state government. 

 

We do NOT have a spending problem. We have a revenue problem.  MORE NEW TAXES!

 

Congratulations to the right-- you have finally managed to cripple the finest public education system ever built.  The only system ever attempt to educate all it's citizens regardless of race, class, religious affiliation, gender or disability; to attempt to educate all citizens equally; to invest in social mobility and cultivate talent from every sector of society is now on it's knees, thanks to your strangle hold on funds and your anti-education agenda. Your loathing for this great equalizer has finally born fruit. The schools that can actually educate function only because they are supported by wealthy PTAs and private foundations, while the schools attended by poor and working class families are falling apart. Parents of typically developing children are calling for cuts to special education. One parent described what is happening to our district as "death by a thousand cuts." 

 

I suppose next spring you'll be complaining about test scores and blaming children, parents and teachers for those too. I blame you. I know how hard those teachers work, and how much time we spend on homework and at board meetings. Now you, the legislature, need to do your part. We need more teachers, smaller classes, more supplies and enough money to heat the buildings. Oh-- that stuff is not free. 

Shame, shame, shame on us for letting the legislature get away with this. Let's take the week off, hop on those district funded jets, go up to the capitol and demand a rescue package for our school system. And afterwards, we can go out for cocktails and plan our next golf vacation...

For more on this issue, see the article in the SF Chronicle: 

http://sfgate.com/cgi?file=/c/a/2009/01/14/MNS4159KA4.DTL

school boards' face the impossible

I attended our local school board meeting last night to hear the latest in heartbreaking discussions of what to cut from the budget. This has been a resounding theme in our district, and many others for several years. Of course, we live in California, a state which, with the 7th largest economy in the world has the worst budgeting process in the world as far as I can tell. Still with our schools in 47th out of 50th in funding, we are still trying hard to reach 51 (allowing Puerto Rico to pass us). 

And our courageous Republican minority is still holding the budget hostage (we have a super majority rule here, so that two thirds of the state legislature has to pass the budget) insisting that they will not, not, not raise taxes. It might, they insist, hurt the economy. 

And it is not just the Republican minority in the state legislature. Parcel taxes in our district have failed the last three times we attempted to campaign. People were buying new SUVs and Wii's and wide screen digital TVs and voting down parcel taxes. I guess all that spending was good for the economies of the companies manufacturing these goods-- like Sony, Toyota and GMC. At least American car companies benefitted from all our spending right? And it provided good jobs, with full minimum wage jobs and no benefits or security for retail workers at good retail outlets. 

But I am confused. 

Our govenor lowered taxes, as promised in his campaign to recall the previous govenor, and the economy does not really seem to have gotten better in the last couple years...

Hmmm. So i want to try and think this through. Cut the budget further and what are the results? More people lose their jobs and can't make their mortgages. More homes go into foreclosure. More banks struggle. There are no jobs right now, so more people need general assistance, medicaid and food stamps, (which are also being cut, in order I guess to stimulate the economy) Shelters and food banks are already overwhelmed so I guess those newly homeless people will just have to live under the bridges, which actually are kind of crowded right now...

so how does all this budget cutting help,  exactly?  Any one?

We have already had, for years, kids going around the neighborhood, standing in lines at the grocery store and at the transit stations begging for donations or selling candy and gum to support music, art, sports, and yes, inconceivably even science programs for school. Every time I see them, I am ashamed. I am ashamed of my community, my state and my country. We should be taking care of this, not them. Why are our children forced to walk the streets begging for money for their schools? That seems fiscally irresponsible. Or some kind of irresponsible. 

I am proud to pay my taxes. I would pay more. The amount of money we pay in property taxes would not even cover tuition for one of my children in private school, much less three. And that tax money is supposed to cover a lot of other things, like 911 services, road building, medical and dental insurance for children...

In the Monty Python lampoon the The Life of Brian, they lampooned the anti-government stance. "What have the Romans ever done for us?" asks one of the revolutionaries of Judea. The others chime in, "Well, aqueducts." The first guy pauses, and says, "Well, besides aqueducts!?" After some arguing back and forth the list comes to include most of civilization: aqueducts, schools, sewers, health care, roads, trade... and so on. And after the long list, the first guy finally says, "Yeah, but besides all that?"

So besides dams and aqueducts, navigable harbors and water ways, vector control, health care for children, the elderly and disabled, k-12 schools community colleges and universities, roads, bridges, street lights, public utilities management, pollution regulation, public safety, fire fighters, ambulances, trauma centers, parks and recreation services, water treatment and sewage, farmers markets, street sweeping... what the heck are we getting for our tax dollars? Yeah, but besides that...

I am proud to pay my taxes and do my bit. I wish to never see another homeless family, another homeless veteran, another mentally ill person soiled and sitting in a doorway, another child with bad teeth or another student begging for money for her school. It would be worth not getting my kids an X-Box for that. Maybe they would even get some exercise and read without one. I wonder what others would give up.  And get. If we did. 

Fund the schools. Some day this generation of kids will grow up. And I don't think they will forget what we did when it was our turn to be responsible for them.