Advocacy

Is the Potential Elimination of Adult Education in Los Angeles Our Wisconsin Moment?

/ The Old Crank
latimes-march14

Photo of the front page of the March 14th edition of the Los Angeles Times, from the Save Adult Ed! Web site.

About a year ago, Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times described the effort by Governor Walker of Wisconsin to slash the collective bargaining rights of his state’s public employees as a potential “watershed for public-sector unions, perhaps signaling the beginning of a decline in their power — both at the bargaining table and in politics.”

The situation in Wisconsin galvanized the labor movement and resulted in a massive protest that engaged people from around the country. I’ve been thinking about those protests the last couple of months as I’ve been following the school budget situation in Los Angeles, where the school board has decided to completely shut down adult education unless new revenue or teacher pay cuts are accepted. Eliminating adult education in L.A. would cut off adult education services to well over 300,000 people.

There are a lot of differences between the crisis in L.A. what was happening in Wisconsin a year ago in many, many fundamental ways. For one thing, the effort to dismantle public sector unions in Wisconsin was connected to an organized, long-standing national political agenda, and to my knowledge there is no political party with a specific agenda to dismantle adult education. Secondly, adult education ever had the political clout or recognition that organized labor has. But I do think an argument can be made that the attempt to shut down adult education in L.A. is a similar “watershed” moment for the field, both because of the scale of the protests (500 people at the rally yesterday), and, possibly, the ramifications. If adult education services at this scale, and with such visible, active support, can simply be dropped—if the city and the school board, in other words, gets away with doing this—does this send a message to policymakers across the country that they can get away with it too? Granted, adult education has never been in a very secure position in most states; as noted by CLASP, several states have been cutting funding for adult education dramatically the last few years, and Arizona dropped state funding altogether in 2010.

But eliminating a program of this size is, I believe, unprecedented (by comparison, according to CLASP, Arizona’s 2010 cut dropped services for 40,000 people). For this reason, it feels like a dangerous line in the sand that the adult education field should not allow to be crossed, similar to the way in which labor leaders realized that the fight in Wisconsin last year had ramifications that went well beyond Wisconsin state borders.

Here is a video of the guy with the megaphone above. He was living under a bridge before he learned English:

LAUSD Board Approves Budget Proposal They Say Could Allow Adult Education to Continue (Updated)

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

march-13-rally-saveadulted-lausd-headquarters(UPDATED BELOW)

Last month, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board held off on a proposal to completely eliminate the LAUSD’s adult education program, which would have left over 300,000 adult students without adult education services in Los Angeles.

According the L.A. Weekly, the Board instead asked Superintendent John Deasy and the unions to work together on a plan to balance the budget that would not require eliminating adult education and other programs, like pre-K services, also slated for elimination. According to the Weekly, Deasy started that ball rolling at the meeting by specifically pitching a parcel tax proposal just before the Board voted on the matter—one that “he and Board President Monica Garcia mentioned at every opportunity throughout the meeting.” Moreover, the Superintendent implored those speaking against the program eliminations to support such a tax proposal. (Some suggested at the time that the proposal to zero out adult education might, in fact, have been “orchestrated by district officials to galvanize support” for the tax increase.)

Today, as reported in the Contra Costa Times, the Board met and approved the plan the Superintendent came up with, which not only includes the parcel tax proposal (specifically, putting a $298 parcel tax on the November ballot to raise $255 million a year for the next five years), but also would require request LAUSD labor unions to accept a one-year pay cut across the board (!), which they estimate will save another $220 million. If both of these things are approved, Deasy says LAUSD will be able to continue adult education (although my guess from that language is that this does not necessarily mean that the budget for adult education services might not be reduced) and other services that have been threatened with elimination.

UPDATE, 3/14: A different story appearing in the same paper says that the vote was for “a worst-case budget that would gut popular programs like Adult and Early-Childhood Education for 2012-13, although a recent infusion of state money allowed officials to hold out hope of restoring some programs by fall.” That seems to be consistent with this post, although I still don’t understand what exactly has been cut and when those cuts would go in to effect or potentially be restored. I think the bottom line is that the proposal appears to do something short of eliminating adult education completely while leaving it’s budgetary future more than a little murky.

UPDATE 2, 3/14: More stories out today that clarify this a bit better. Basically, I’ve got this right, but the way I characterized it originally is a bit more hopeful-sounding than it should have been.

According to  in The Huffington Post, (citing the  Daily News) Deasy’s plan is a worst-case scenario plan that does in fact eliminate adult education and other programs—which is more or less just like the old plan, but with two differences:

1. Deasy was able to make a $180-million readjustment to the deficit projection as a result of, according to the Los Angeles Times, “a variety of unexpected good news, including the restoration of projected cuts to transportation, higher-than-expected state lottery revenue and a decrease in projected benefits expenditures.” As a result, the district was able to maintain some programs in the plan as it now stands, such as career and technical training for high school students.

2. Adult Education and several other programs, on the other hand, are still eliminated in this plan. The difference is that they could still be restored if the parcel tax increase is approved by the voters and/or the unions accept the across-the-board pay cut he has proposed.

In other words, the plan doesn’t assume that the revenue/savings ideas will go forward. It’s a worst-case plan that leaves some hope for adult education restoration, but no promises.

In order to pass, parcel taxes need the approval of two-thirds of voters. LAUSD’s last parcel tax measure in 2010 was defeated with 52 percent of the vote. I have no idea how likely it is that the unions will accept the pay cut proposal and too tired to find out. But I can guess it will not be (has not been?) warmly received.

Some adult education advocates in Los Angeles have strong opinions about the financial mess that LAUSD and how to resolve them that go to more fundamental issues of fairness and economic justice. In fact, for those interested, there is a lot more to read about the situation in L.A. here and here. (The second link is to a Web site set up by L.A. adult education advocates.)

(In addition to the updates above, the headline has been re-written to better reflect the tenuous nature of the possibility that adult education will be restored.)

California State Superintendent of Public Instruction: “Adult Education a Vital and Integral Part of the Entire School Spectrum”

/ The Old Crank

On Thursday, the local Argonaut newspaper published a story that recounted some of the public testimony provided to the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education last week when it met to consider a budget proposal that would have eliminated adult education in the district.

That proposal is now on hold: a new budget will be presented on March 13th that will include a $270-a-year parcel tax referendum, which the Argonaut reports could make it to the ballot as early as June. Presumably this would generate enough new revenue to preserve adult education funding in the district. (However, according to the Argonaut, the parcel tax initiative will require a two-thirds vote for approval, and it’s not clear from the story how likely it is to pass).

For anyone looking for great examples of how adult education impacts a community, I highly recommend this piece. The testimony and statements presented at the meeting were excellent.

I was particularly impressed by the statement provided by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson:

“It is our goal at the California Department of Education to consider the ‘whole student’ in our daily work of providing technical assistance and oversight of the multitude of state and federal programs we are responsible to administer,” the schools superintendent wrote to the district in a Feb. 10 letter.

“As such, we consider adult education a vital and integral part of the entire school spectrum.” (my emphasis)

Torlakson touched on some of the same reasons why it is important to preserve funding for schools like the Venice Skills Center and the Venice Community Adult School that students who spoke with The Argonaut did.

“It is through adult education that the parents of the students within our kindergarten through 12 schools can gain the education and literacy skills necessary to better their personal situations, thus benefiting all of California,” he wrote. “It is here that they can advance their own careers, obtain the skills for gainful employment and become better parents and more active participants in our communities.” (my emphasis)

Torlakson added there is evidence that with “minimal fiscal resources, adult education still produces long-term and far reaching benefits.”

What Can We Learn from California’s Adult Education Funding Crisis?

/ The Old Crank

While the President’s proposed FY 2013 budget will continue to be the focus of attention in Washington this week, the most urgent adult education funding battles over the next year are more likely to occur at the state and district level, I think—most notably. Today, for example, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board has scheduled a vote on a proposal to cut most of the $200 million in state money earmarked for adult education in the district.

Is the adult education funding crisis in California unique, or could it happen elsewhere? State funding for adult education has, in fact, been cut in other states in recent years—but California appears to be the most dramatic example, due in large part to a provision in the California Budget Act (CBA) that allows school districts in the state to shift dollars away from adult education to make up for shortfalls in district budgets.

But while the CBA (and the state’s overall position as an economic basket case) makes California unique in some ways, the situation also provides us with a case study in how adult education funding can become vulnerable. The article I cited yesterday in the Contra Costa Times provides a summary of the factors that contributed to the crisis in Los Angeles:

For the last five years, the cash-strapped state government has provided the district with just part of the money it is supposed to receive and has extended IOUs for the rest. This year, for instance, Los Angeles Unified got just $3,338 of the $6,506 it had been promised to educate each student, according to district officials.

Los Angeles Unified, meanwhile, must fulfill its labor contracts — roughly 90 percent of its costs are personnel-related — while coping with the expiration of state and federal grants and stimulus money. Lower birthrates and the exodus to charter schools has reduced district enrollment, resulting in less state funding and making it more difficult to serve the remaining students.

Here then, are some of the conditions to be on the lookout for in your state or district that may lead to adult education funding cut proposals:

  • Lower State Tax Revenue. (Or, at least, lower than expected tax revenue.)
  • Expiration of Federal Stimulus Funding. This is happening everywhere, so go ahead and check this one off on your list.
  • Locked-in Contractual Obligations. Labor contracts, mostly, although there could be other long-term contracts that districts can’t get out of or re-negotiate. (Note that in the story above, 90% of LAUSD costs are labor related.)
  • Reduced Enrollment Due to Lower Birthrates or Population Shifts.
  • Reduced Enrollment Due to Charter School Expansion.

There could be other factors, of course—and they are going to vary depending on how state adult education funding is disbursed (in some areas, for example, school districts are not involved in adult education at all, so school district formula funding based on enrollment is not going to be an issue). The point is, while I realize that California is in some ways a unique situation, I still think it’s useful for adult education advocates to be thinking about the factors that have led to adult education cuts here and in other states and districts across the country, and to be on the lookout for them in your state or district.