LOS ANGELES, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has found himself politically between the proverbial rock and a hard place thanks to the woeful condition of California's budget and public education system.
In what could be a preview of next year's gubernatorial race, the education spending proposed in Schwarzenegger's new budget came under attack Tuesday by a prominent Democratic state official whom political analysts have penciled in on the short list of prospective challengers for Schwarzenegger's job in 2006.
"He has looked right into the face of the children of California and he has broken his promise to them
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Those are fighting words in California where terms such as "crisis" are thrown around not only by politicians and media pundits, but also by respected think tanks such as the RAND Corp., which this month concluded in a report that the state's schools were under-funded and under-performing.
And when sputtering schools are combined with a necessarily tight budget proposal from the incumbent governor, the challengers for Schwarzenegger's job find themselves with a ready-made campaign issue for the Democrats and their powerful allies in the state's various teachers unions.
Angelides is a veteran of California's political scene and is respected as a competent performer; however ascending to the governor's mansion requires a certain amount of bombast and bluster in order to inflame the passions of the voters -- particularly when the goal is unseating a still-popular governor who is not above hamming it up while on the stump.
It was actually Schwarzenegger who threw the first punch in the developing brawl in his State of the State speech on Jan. 5 when he proposed tying teacher pay to merit rather than the current system in which salaries are based largely on seniority.
"Your child deserves a good teacher," the governor said in his address. "An educational system that rewards and protects a bad teacher at the expense of a child is wrong. And I intend to change that system."
Merit pay proposals are seen by the teachers unions, and presumably a large number of their members, as an overly subjective means of not so much rewarding excellence of some teachers, but an excuse to not raise salaries for the vast majority of a district's faculty.
Merit pay created one education controversy for Schwarzenegger and the governor's budget proposal created another potential firestorm that was the main topic of the news conference at Bret Harte Elementary School in Burbank by Angelides and Jack O'Connell, the state school superintendent.
Schwarzenegger last week unveiled a proposed $111.7 billion budget proposal that increases state spending by 4.2 percent and plugs a $9 billion gap based in large part of anticipated higher state revenues thanks to the recovering economy.
Spending on education is actually increased in the Schwarzenegger budget by nearly $3 billion
Canada goose jakker, although that is pretty much necessary to cover rising enrollment and will not improve the overall bottom line.
What galled Angelides and O'Connell was the governor's decision to siphon off $2 billion that was earmarked for education under Proposition 98, a voter-approved initiative from 1988 that guarantees a certain level of funding for education.
Schwarzenegger may have solid reasons for his moves in a time of tight finances; however his opponents are also on solid ground when they point out the contradiction of holding back on funding increases for education at a time when foundering student performance is considered an epic crisis with California kids
Women's Shoes, many of whom do not even speak English, lagging behind most of the nation in performance tests.
Angelides and O'Connell have promised publicly not to allow Schwarzenegger to balance the budget on the backs of California's children. It will be up to the voters to infer if they so choose that the message also means that the budget won't be balanced on the backs of the teachers' union.
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