Yesterday in the news section of the Sacramento Bee, ace Capitol reporter Kevin Yamamura penned an article, The Reality Behind Recent Budget Rhetoric, in which Yamamura, among other things, provides this analysis on Governor Brown’s statement that an "all cuts" budget would cause a 4-5 week cut in the school year… Specifically, the article says…
Brown: "If you’re going to have $25 billion in cuts, and you’re going to cut four or five weeks of school, then I think people are very shocked if you didn’t ask their permission."
Analysis: Cutting the school year by five or six weeks is highly unlikely.
K-12 schools could face a $4.5 billion reduction in funding if the taxes fall through, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. Each billion-dollar cut translates into one week of school, so that could be Brown’s interpretation.
Schools, however, have many ways other than cutting instruction to save money, such as raising the kindergarten age or increasing class size. Though many districts have cut the school year by as much as five days, teachers have fought such reductions, which translate into furloughs and lost instructional time.
Then you turn to the Bee’s Editorial Pages, also in yesterday’s paper, you get to read in their lead editorial lecturing Republican legislators on how they should act in this budget showdown (written by the an Editorial Board that has not a single Republican on it) that they are perpetuating the shortening of the school year myth ("by months" they say). I’ve excerpted the relevant section below.
It was just something to read the news page debunk spin on one page, and watch the liberal editorial board use that same spin on another.
I guess my advice to my friends on the Bee’s Editorial Board… Read your paper!
From the Bee’s Editorial:
If Republicans don’t allow voters to decide, the governor and lawmakers will be forced into four possible choices, ranging from the catastrophic to the tortuous.
• An all-cuts budget. Without a tax extension, Brown insists he would attempt to reduce the entire $26.6 billion deficit through cuts, but we can’t see how he could do that. We’ve played The Bee’s "Budget Balancer" and see no way of cutting $26.6 billion without closing at least one state university, reducing the public school year by months or letting dangerous criminals out of prison. Any and all would be unacceptable.