There’s a way to shield public education from state budget cuts

By Gillian Garaci, San Francisco | 12/13/2023

Regarding “California schools could face cuts as state budget deficit soars to $68B” (California, SFChronicle.com, Dec. 7): We are reading yet another article about our state’s increasing budget deficit and cuts to our public schools, and once again our leaders in Sacramento are not providing us any real solutions to this.

What’s most absurd is that we were so close to finding a real sustainable solution to fully fund our public schools. Californians came close to reforming Proposition 13 with a ballot measure in 2020 that lost by 2 percentage points.

And if people forgot, according to the 2020 initiative, reforming just the commercial side of Prop. 13 would help the state restore over $12 billion for our public schools and services every year.

As the article mentions, “California is famously a boom-and-bust state, its fortunes tied to high-tech companies and the stock market.” And therein lies the problem. 

We need to stop relying on a volatile economy and start figuring out a more sustainable source of revenue for one of — if not the most important — public service. Maybe one that funds public schools the way every other state does — property taxes.