California has two laws and one court order on school funding. The first law was the lotto. The voter approved lotto was suppose to give extra money for things like computers and updated science labs to the schools. Instead it went to the geneneral fund. The second law in a minimum funding law backed by the voters. The court order said that California was not putting the same percentage of money into schools in poor areas. Either money had to come from the schools that were getting more money or new money had to go to those schools. Other money that went to the schools was borrowed money. That money was suppose to go to the schools earlier when there was a crises. He promised to pay the schools back when the crises was over. The housing boom gave California enough money for the schools to be paid back.

Some of it is wasteful spending, for instance the Los Angeles school district is a huge fiscal disaster from building a $100 million school on a visually noticable toxic dump to paying huge rent for their district office, because they don’t want to use their own district head quarters building which has some cosmetic cracks in it.

California also has a court order for prison funding for healthcare to prisoners.

California also has never met a union it doesn’t like. The pay for government officials is outrageous. The average government employee for the last five years makes $32,800+$13,700 in benefits. The average American makes about $34,300. In Los Angeles the average goverment salary is $79,000.
From this, I would say a payroll freeze would be permanently needed.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/PUBLIC+PAYROLL+SOARS+LOCAL%2c+STATE+GOVERNMENT+WORKERS+REAP+BONANZA-a0114264020
The trouble is, since these are union jobs, the police, teachers and others could legally stop what they are doing and strike.

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Although I tend to agree with most of what you say, I live in a county where the Reservation Casinos virtually fund our high schools and community colleges and bring tons of non-tax money to our communities, yet there is an active group who wants to do away with Reservation protections and force the State and Counties to pick up the bill through higher taxes.

The money spent to fund illegals here is astronomical.

And there is no way that I’ve seen in recent memory to break the hold that the large counties, especially those of northern Calif. have on this state. Those who keep forcing the Pelosis and the Feinsteins on us.

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Thank you Banjo… If money solved education problems Washington D.C. schools would lead the nation instead of being so far behind the rest:

http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2008/18src.h27.html

Trying to pacify the CA teacher’s unions with billions more to waste seems to be the wrong way to solve the problem.

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The above poster talks about “investing” in schools and education. He meant throwing money at a system that doesn’t educate but insures the people responsible for this continue to suck more out of the trough.

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You can never trust anyone remotely connected to a Kennedy. Sooner or later the dark side will show up.

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Investing in schools and teachers, IT IS SOOO WRONG !!

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