Schools

Education Advocates Bus to State Capital

South Bay residents, teachers, school board members and administrators descend upon the Capitol to urge legislators to stop cuts to education.

On the day Gov. Jerry Brown released his May revision of the California budget, a group of 80 concerned citizens boarded buses near Eastridge Mall in San Jose Monday and headed to Sacramento.

The event was organized by Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese's office and the Silicon Valley Education Foundation. Cortese started the annual trip to Sacramento nine years ago when he was a San Jose city councilman. 

Each year, a group, mostly from San Jose, travels to the state Capitol to meet with state legislators after the May revised budget is released. Most of the participants take a day off from work or school.

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"It's not just a joyride," Cortese said of the two-hour travel time in each direction. "It's something that has impact" on both participants and the legislators they meet.

It was more encouraging this year than last year, he said.

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"This year, there's a lot of creative thinking, a lot more hope," Cortese said, in contrast to last year when legislators seemed bleak about the situation. On Monday, legislators spoke about a compromise, such as a short-term tax extension to keep the schools afloat financially.

The San Jose group took up a meeting room and had the dozen or so students at the dais, where legislators would typically sit, while parents, teachers, school board members and administrators sat in the audience.

The elected officials who spoke were mostly Democrats. They included Assembly members Jim Beall (D-San Jose), Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville), Rich Gordon (D-Menlo Park) and Joan Buchanan (D-Alamo), along with Senator Elaine Alquist (D-Santa Clara) and Controller John Chiang.

Cupertino resident Kothandaraman Sridharan and his wife took the day off to join the group. Their eldest daughter is a graduate of Lynbook High, and their younger daughter is a sophomore at Monta Vista High.

Cupertino Union School District is a revenue-limit district, where it relies on state aid in addition to property taxes. The high schools Sridharan's daughters attended in Cupertino are part of Fremont Union School District. Their school budgets are primarily funded by local property taxes, as are the districts in Palo Alto, Los Gatos-Saratoga and Los Altos.

In general, Sridharan said, if the state reduces funding for schools, it is going to be a disaster. 

"The quality of education is deteriorating," he said, expressing his concern about whether future children educated in California will be able to compete globally with students in India and China.

Bob Weeks, a retired public defender who lives in San Jose, said he wanted to get across a message that he had used when he visited Sacramento previously to lobby against cuts to the University of California system.

"Even in tough times, you don't eat your seed corn," he said. "It's what you need to plant next year's crop. All of education, that's the seed corn for California. That's the future."

Weeks, whose grandchildren attend public schools in the Windsor Unified School District near Santa Rosa, was part of a small group that met with a representative from the office of Senator Sam Blakeslee (R-San Luis Obispo).

He said Blakeslee's aide said the senator had not taken a position on the tax extensions. The governor is still pursuing the extensions as part of the solution to funding for the state's public schools.

The group left with the understanding there would be a followup meeting at Blakeslee's district office.

"The aide did a great job of talking to us," said Diana Le, a freshman at Yerba Buena High School, part of the East Side Union High School District, who visited the Capitol for the first time.

Two weeks earlier, the Silicon Valley Education Foundation had partnered with the supervisor to put on an education panel leading up to the bus trip.

"The thing that impressed me the most—they were ordinary people willing to spend 12 hours on a bus and sitting in a Senate meeting room and listen to their legislators," said Bob Nichols, education manager.

"Democracy is live and well," he said. "People are really committed to their schools."


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