June Mother Tongue Column

California Children’s Rally In Sacramento to Protest State Education Budget Cuts
By Kristen Taylor

We had a little problem at the house the other day. The kitchen caught on fire. It was burning for a while before my husband came home from work. I said, “Honey, the kitchen’s on fire. What do you think we should do?”

“Easy,” he said. “Let’s throw some gasoline on it!”

This didn’t really happen. And that’s not an accurate representation of my husband’s problem-solving abilities, I swear. Jeesh, who do you think I married, Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Our public schools are in crisis. California ranks near the bottom for every National Assessment of Education Progress test given to our students—and because of No Child Left Behind, that’s a lot of tests. The state, however, is facing a budget shortage, and the Governor’s solution is to cut the very line item that’s already flailing from lack of money: K-12 education. His budget calls for $3 billion in cuts to schools, which will drop per-pupil spending in California to roughly 48th in the United States.

The state of California—the seventh largest economy in the world—has the sixth-worst performing students in the U.S., with nearly the lowest per-pupil budget and the governor’s solution is to spend even less? I think I need a 10th grade Political Science refresher, because I’m awfully confused.

So are a lot of other families, and they’re taking action. On June 17th, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Capitol Building in Sacramento, the California Children’s Rally will celebrate our state’s resourceful, brilliant children and their families in a demonstration meant to protest these ludicrous cuts to education before the state legislators vote on the new budget. The rally is organized by writer and public school parent Sandra Tsing Loh and she and her cohorts have built in loads of educational and artistic activities for families. You can even camp at a farm in nearby Cool, CA.

Check it out here: www.californiachildrensrally.com, and make a commitment to tell our state government what every 5th grader with 32 students per teacher, no art class and constant standardized testing already knows: these cuts will make a bad situation much, much worse.