California

Los Angeles School Board Votes Tomorrow on a Cut that Could Deprive Thousands of Children the Support They Need to Succeed in School

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

Tomorrow the Los Angeles Unified School District Board may vote in favor of a budget cut that could result in thousands of children being deprived of the support they need to succeed in school. As permitted by California state law, the board is set to vote Tuesday on a proposal to cut most of the $200 million in state money earmarked for adult education in order to address the district’s $557 million deficit.

As I noted last December, school districts all over California have been shifting dollars away from adult education to shore up K-12 budgets for the last several years because of a provision in the California Budget Act (CBA) which allows school districts to do this when budgets are tight. Los Angeles is the highest profile example to date.

The choice here is not about decimating the adult education system in Los Angeles so that the status quo in K-12 education can be preserved. It’s about choosing a course of action that would be disastrous for many K-12 students as well. As noted in this article on the impact of the cut on one particular adult community school in the district, the loss of adult education impacts not just the adults but the educational success of the children of those adults who are parents or caregivers.

Administrators and faculty at South Gate Community Adult School believe that cutting adult education will affect students at the K-12 campuses, and especially in areas with a high immigrant population. In those communities, parents are learning skills at the adult schools that allow them to help their children academically.

“This morning, we had role play, where a parent was at a conference with their child’s math teacher,” said John Liddle, teacher of English as a second language at South Gate Community Adult School. Using such situations to learn English interest immigrant parents, who want to understand their children’s school experience in the United States. “We use topics that are of high interest to [adult] students, such as health, jobs and parenting,” he said.

Dario Aleman, 41, was a medical doctor in Cuba before arriving in the United States in May 2010. Learning English is very important to him since he hopes to become fluent and renew his medical license. However, the adult classes also help him as a parent, since he can better prepare and help his 6-year-old son.

“If you prepare adults, the adults will then prepare their children,” said Aleman, who is also taking computer skills classes. “We want our children to be excellent [students] in the future.”

It gets worse: According to the article above, adult schools in the District served about 100,000 K-12 students with “catchup” classes so that they could graduate on time from high school.

The scope of the cuts has been so great in California that, arguably, the CBA is the worst piece of legislation for adult education in the entire U.S. over the last several years. If the LAUSD goes through with this cut, I don’t think it will be arguable anymore. Even worse, as research continues to emerge linking the education success of parents and caregivers to children’s success in school, the negative impact on school success generally may be felt in California for a generation.

California Continues Disinvestment in Adult Literacy

/ The Old Crank

As expected, California’s latest revenue expectations were short of what was needed to prevent automatic state spending cuts to to libraries, universities and schools for 2012, including $15 million in library funding.

Last Saturday, the Napa Valley Register reported that The Literacy Center of Napa City-County Library would be losing all of its state funding (about about $48,000). While this will not result in the closing of the center, it does represent a total withdrawal of state support for library-based community adult education in the county.

The Literacy Center coordinator Lisa Smartt, who has worked in literacy for 30 years, said she and her colleagues have watched in disbelief as funding for their special literacy programs has continued to shrink.

“We’ve been shaking our heads,” Smartt said. “We never thought we would see this.”

The State Library has been the main source of funding for the library’s Literacy Center since 1985. The bulk of the funding paid for the workbooks and other materials used by the center.

The Literacy Center, located inside the Napa City-County Library, offers free one-on-one tutoring for adult learners who need help with their basic reading, English as a second language, GED preparation or math skills. These learners include native speakers, students learning English as a second language, the learning-disabled and others who “just fell through the cracks,” Smartt said.

“In these difficult economic times, more people have been using the Literacy Center to improve their job skills,” Kreimeier said, adding that the center receives numerous referrals from Workforce Napa.

For the Literacy Center to remain open, Smartt will have to find more creative ways to secure funding.

Fundraising is a challenge for the Literacy Center because, as a government agency, it can’t compete with Napa’s nonprofits for local grants. This limits the center to seeking support from private donors as well as state and federal grant programs — which often have a wide pool of applicants.

To maintain a robust program, the Literacy Center requires about $60,000 per year. This does not include the salaries of its three staff members, which are supported by the county, Smartt said. Currently, the center is operating on less than $30,000 per year.

Smartt is trying to look at the positive side of the budget cuts. The “blessing” in all of this, she said, is “we get to reinvent ourselves.”

The Literacy Center will be shifting its focus to one-on-one literacy services at the library — specifically GED preparation and employability tutoring. Almost all of the general outreach programs will be eliminated, including Families for Literacy, Homework Assistance, and the jails program where literacy tutors worked one-on-one with inmates.

I appreciate the positive thinking that one must maintain when faced with the elimination of a major funding source. But it’s also clear from the last paragraph that cutting services—including family literacy services and services to inmates—is part of that reinvention.

According to the paper, Smartt believes that “any country that wants to remain competitive should make literacy a top priority.” The question is whether policymakers in California and elsewhere actually believe this—and if not, why not?

New Cuts to Adult Literacy Programs in California Appear Likely

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

The Sacramento Bee reports this morning that it is likely that California’s revenue expectations will fall far short of what was hoped for when the budget was passed back in in June. The Legislative Analyst’s Office is expecting $3.7 billion less than expected, and according to the budget scheme Governor Brown and the California legislature came up with last spring, this would result in automatic cuts to to libraries, universities and schools. (The governor and the California legislature inserted $2.5 billion in new cuts that automatically trigger if the Governor’s Department of Finance determines California will fall short of their revenue projections.)

These cuts will include $15 million in library funding, which would hit California’s large network of volunteer-driven adult literacy programs pretty hard. The Bee quotes Michael Dillon, a lobbyist for the California Library Foundation, who says the cuts “would significantly impact readers and people trying to get sufficient reading skills.”

In addition, it appears to me that the potential for further cuts to adult education operated by school districts is also a strong possibility. That is because further K-12 reductions are also possible, although the Bee reports that it is unclear how deep into school budgets the state will cut, if at all.

If it does, I would expect further cuts to adult education will result, as school districts respond by continuing to shift dollars away from adult education to shore up K-12 budgets. The California Budget Act (CBA) allows school districts to this, and it has been happening all over California for the last few years. I wrote about one such example here.

The new revenue forecast will be out this week.