advocacy

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.

Any Adult Literacy Advocates Watching the State of the Union?

/ The Old Crank

D.C. LEARNs will be live tweeting the President’s State of the Union Address tonight from the South Court Auditorium at the White House.* Better yet, so will the National Coalition for Literacy. You can read more about it here, how to follow us etc. — in addition to some ideas I have posted about what to look for in the President’s address.

*Note: Not actually the White House. The South Court Auditorium is actually next door at the EEOB.

More Dangers in House UI Extension Proposal

/ The Old Crank

Last week, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) issued a new report on a bill that the House passed in December (H.R. 3630) to extend the Social Security payroll tax cut and extend unemployment insurance (UI). One of the provisions in that bill would have denied UI benefits to workers without a high school diploma or GED. Congress eventually passed a two-month payroll tax cut and UI extension bill without any restrictions, but it is expected that Republicans in the House are going to push to include many of the provisions in their bill to be included in any legislation to extend the payroll tax cut and UI through the end of this year.

Adult education advocates have been focused on the GED/High School Diploma requirement in SEC. 2122 of that bill, as noted above. (You can read why this is such a bad idea in an earlier CBPP paper here.) Reading CBPP’s latest paper, it appears to me that the state waiver provisions in that bill should also be of concern to adult education advocates, assuming they are proposed again.

Under SEC. 2123 of H.R. 3630, up to 10 states could apply for waivers that would exempt them from key federal requirements for state UI systems, so that they may conduct “demonstration projects” designed either to “expedite the reemployment of individuals” or “improve the effectiveness of a State in carrying out its State law with respect to reemployment.” Specifically, they could obtain waivers from these critical requirements:

  1. Section 3304(a)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code, which requires that “all money withdrawn from the unemployment fund of the State shall be used solely in the payment of unemployment compensation, exclusive of expenses of administration.”
  2. Paragraph (1) of section 303(a) of the Social Security Act, which requires that state methods of administration to be” reasonably calculated to insure full payment of unemployment compensation when due.”
  3. Paragraph (5) of section 303(a) of the Social Security Act, which, again, requires the expenditure of all money withdrawn from a state unemployment fund to be used in the payment of unemployment compensation, exclusive of expenses of administration.

The CBPP paper offers a strong overall critique of these waiver requirements which I encourage you to read. Here are the two specific areas of concern I see from an adult education policy and advocacy perspective:

First, a waiver of the first requirement above would allow states to collect unemployment taxes from employers and then turn around and use those funds for purposes other than paying out UI benefits. I agree with CBPP that this “would start the UI system down a slippery slope that would alter its fundamental nature.” But I can also imagine demonstration projects funded through these waivers that provide new adult education and job training opportunities. (CBPP suggests that as a possibility in their paper.) Since these programs provide unemployed people with skills that should improve their employment prospects, this might seem like a reasonable idea, especially during good times, when states may have a surplus of UI funds (i.e. low unemployment, so more money is going into the system then is going out in the form of benefits). A new source of funding for adult education and job training is always tantalizing.

But it will be just as tempting for legislators to divert those funds elsewhere. How would they able to do this? As the authors of CBPP’s paper explain, the House proposal would “enable states to replace state or local funds now used for job training or other such purposes with diverted UI funds and then to shift the withdrawn funds to other uses.” CBPP suggests tax cuts, and I think that sounds pretty realistic. In other words, the fear is that states will cut their current expenditures on adult education or job training, replace that money with funds from their Unemployment Trust Fund, and take the money they cut and spend it on whatever they like—including tax cuts. This would result in a zero net gain in adult education or job training resources.

It also seems to me that using UI funds for other purposes might significantly destabilize a state’s UI system. If state Unemployment Trust Fund dollars are allowed to be used in part for other purposes—even good ones—what assurances are there that sufficient funds will be available for benefits when the economy goes into a downturn and UI benefit claims soar? During bad times, with less UI tax revenue coming in, and more workers applying for benefits, will we be facing a “bankrupt” UI system that can’t pay out the benefits that workers have earned? Will states then be more inclined to cut benefit levels and/or reduce the number of weeks one can collect benefits?

My second concern has to do with language in SEC. 2123 that may allow states to impose their own new eligibility requirements. The authors of the CBPP paper argue that by allowing states to waive the requirements described above, states will also, by implication, no longer be bound by the definition of “compensation” in Section 3304 of the Internal Revenue Code. This definition basically restricts states from defining eligibility for UI compensation outside of conditions related to their unemployment. According to CBPP, the waivers would allow states “to condition receipt of benefits on factors unrelated to workers’ having amassed a sufficient work record, having become unemployed due to no fault of their own, and looking for a new job.” (my emphasis) This would open the door for states to impose new eligibility requirements and restrictions of their own—such as requiring UI recipients to have a high school diploma or GED.

In other words, these “demonstration project” waivers contained in the House bill could be a backdoor way for states to impose the same educational eligibility requirements that the House would like to impose at the federal level.

So it seems equally important to argue against these state waiver provisions as well as the GED/High School Diploma requirement contained in SEC. 2122. If SEC. 2122 is stripped from whatever bill emerges, but the waiver language remains, it appears that some states would be able to go move forward with similar eligibility restrictions—or worse.