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[essentialsaltes]

LAUSD is considering funding sports, food services, art programs, Academic Decathlon, etc. through corporate sponsorship and advertising logo emblazonment.

Given the fiscal disaster, this may be a grotesque but necessary step, if the alternative is to shut down the football team and the art program.

But it seems a shame we can't adequately fund public education publicly. Yes, that means taxes. So what. It's not like these corporate fairy godmother donors are charitably giving of their own money -- all that money came from consumers. Call it a corporate-mediated tax. This is better?

If and when CA and the LAUSD rights its financial ship, it'll be interesting to see how long it takes to push this back out of the schools. Or will the schools get addicted to and complacent about this new source of funding?

Comments

[aaronjv.livejournal.com]

If you believe Wikipedia, it says:

"[Prop 13] Effect on public schools
California public schools, which during the 1960s had been ranked nationally as among the best, have decreased to 48th in many surveys of student achievement. Some have disputed the attribution of the decline to Proposition 13's role in the change to state financing of public schools, because schools financed mostly by property taxes were declared unconstitutional (the variances in funding between lower and higher income areas being deemed to violate the equal protection clause) in Serrano vs. Priest, and Proposition 13 was then passed partially as a result of that case. California's spending per pupil was the same as the national average until about 1985, when it began decreasing, which resulted in another referendum, Proposition 98, that requires a certain percentage of the state's budget to be directed towards education."

Note that Prop 13 also added the 2/3 majority needed to pass a budget clause (which we FINALLY have started to overturn).

How did it affect education? It lowered the money put into it even as more schools, teachers, etc. were needed due to rising population (rising population, I am going to say, partially due to our then-splendid educational system). Since revenue dropped to schools, they've had to find other means of making that shortfall. Hence, tuition increases for college and the lottery.

Overall, Prop 13 led to all our weird, crazy taxes and fees on everything else, a la car registration fees and sales tax. Is prop 13 the SOLE cause of our educational abyss? No, but I'm labeling it Brutus on the Ides of March.