Free Republic

HIS other attributes and liabilities notwithstanding, Arnold Schwarzenegger deserves much credit for becoming the only recent California governor to value and promote vocational education — and his timing could not be any better. For years, a college-oriented educational and political elite — pandering to parents who universally consider their progeny to be budding doctors, lawyers, accountants and engineers — has been consciously dismantling the state's once-exemplary system of job-oriented education. Heaven only knows how many tens of thousands of California youngsters have been pushed out of high school without diplomas because adults sent the message that anyone without a college...

There is new evidence that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has misled voters as to the actual need for its gargantuan and highly expensive building program. The district's latest estimates show that enrollment in the nation's second largest school district is declining much more rapidly than previously revealed. The precipitous decline could result in some of the schools now being built with bond money sitting as empty and useless as Saddam Hussein's former palaces. The reaction of most citizens of Los Angeles to the mere mention of LAUSD is intense disgust. After all, this district has built a...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's re-appointment of a political rival to the state Board of Education didn't buy him much love in the enemy camp. On Wednesday, the governor gave another term on the board to Joe Nunez, a longtime teachers' union activist and chair of the organization that battled Schwarzenegger in last year's special election. On Thursday, Nunez, in his role as the Alliance for a Better California board chair, filed a five-page complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission against Schwarzenegger and the governor's old campaign vehicle, the California Recovery Team. It demanded that the FPPC investigate and file a...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has reappointed to the state Board of Education a top political officer of the California Teachers Association, a union which continues to call for the governor's head. Schwarzenegger's office said the reappointment of Joe Nunez, 53, of Stockton was neither an election-year olive branch to the union nor politically motivated in any other way. "Mr. Nunez has more than three decades of experience in education," Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Sabrina Demayo Lockhart said. "The governor is always looking for the most qualified folks... We highly regard each appointment that we make, we look for people who are highly qualified...

SAN MARCOS – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger touted his education budget Friday in a town hall event at San Elijo School, saying the spending plan will lead to smaller class sizes and improvements to charter schools. Speaking to parents, students and teachers at the San Marcos campus for kindergarten through eighth-grade pupils, Schwarzenegger said his record $54 billion school budget translates to $11,000 per student. “I believe our children should have first call on our treasury,” Schwarzenegger said. “Teachers should have the resources they need to do their jobs well and schools deserve the funds they require to expand, update and...

CARMEL VALLEY ---- The state Department of Education is working to place an initiative for a $50 parcel tax on the November ballot as a way to pump an additional $500 million a year into public school education, State Superintendent of Schools Jack O'Connell said Monday. The tax, an annual assessment of $50 on every property in California, could generate an additional $500 million that would be earmarked specifically for California schools. EdVoice, described by its leaders as an organization of reform-minded philanthropists who support greater student achievement through investment, is backing the measure, said EdVoice president Christopher Cabaldon. The...

Revelations of secrecy and possible self-dealing in the compensation of some of the University of California's top administrators expose a problem deeper than the need for more transparent "communication" of the rationale behind them. The more significant issue is the rationale itself: the goal of privatizing higher education in California, which was made explicit in the recent "compact" between University of California President Robert Dynes, California State University Chancellor Charles Reed and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The compact substantially cut base public funding for higher education, required both UC and Cal State to impose large and rapid tuition increases as a...

After seven years as the innovative and sometimes abrasive leader of California's second largest school district, Alan Bersin was run out of San Diego by the teachers' union. But you might say he landed on his feet. Bersin is now the education secretary for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. (snip) Bersin is a lifelong Democrat, a graduate of Harvard College, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He is a Yale-trained lawyer who worked as the border enforcement chief for the U.S. Department of Justice before serving as U.S. attorney in San Diego, and he was one of several non-educators to be hired to...

State schools superintendent Jack O'Connell this week called for massive tax increases for the public school bureaucracy while issuing a blunt warning to Gov. Schwarzenegger: "Stop starving our schools." Here's how the governor is "starving our schools." According to the Legislative Analyst's Office, the governor's proposed budget provides $9,508 for every pupil in the California public schools. That's $206 per pupil more than last year. That means every classroom of 30 students will receive $6,180 more next year than it did this year - or a total of $285,240 per classroom. In fact, over the past ten years, total funding...