From: cramer@optilink.COM (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: ca.general
Subject: Re: California Public Schools Funding: A Materplan for Failure
Date: 19 Nov 92 19:23:01 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <rdippold.722025313@qualcom>, rdippold@qualcom.qualcomm.com (Ron Dippold) writes:
> jordan@IMSI.COM (Jordan Hayes) writes:
> >This is news to me.  Prop 13 showed clearly that California taxpayers
> >would rather have lower property taxes than good schools.  I've seen
> 
> We're spending more money per student now than we did then.  Throwing
> more money at schools doesn't help at all when they spend it all on
> expanding the administration.

Yup.  Public funding per pupil, adjusted for inflation, INCREASED
from 1980 to 1989 in California.

In the Tuesday, Sept 18, 1990 San Francisco Chronicle an article titled:
_Special Report: Schools Struggle to Finance Reforms_ by Louis Freedberg the
following statistics are presented:

**********				
*  Revenue trends in education 
*  For grades kindergarten through 12, 1980 through 1990
*
*             Total Financing     Number of students      Total Spending per
*             (billions)          attending daily         student in 1988 $
*
*1980-81       12.3               4,215,399               $3,856
*1981-82       12.5               4,202,000               $3,715
*1982-83       12.6               4,231,431               $3,660
*1983-84       13.3               4,260,873               $3,656
*1984-85       15.0               4,352,597               $3,844
*1985-86       16.8               4,469,821               $4,059
*1986-87       18.2               4,611,637               $4,116
*1987-88       19.7               4,722,792               $4,172
*1988-89       21.7               4,859,162               $4,290
*1989-90       23.3               5,003,461               $4,279
*
*Source: Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE)
***********
*  School's explosive growth
*  More than one million new students in five years equals greater
*  than 20 percent growth.  Enrollment and average daily attendance
*  with projections through 1995
*  
*                 New students       Total students
*1990-91	         206,000            4,806,000		
*1991-92	         208,000            4,989,000		
*1992-93	         221,000            5,186,000		
*1993-94	         241,000            5,381,000		
*1994-95	         188,000            5,563,000		
*
*Source: California Dept. of Finance, California Dept. of Education
**********
* California's school-age population by race/ethnicity
*
*          White  Hispanic Black Asian Other
*1967-68   75.2%  13.6%    8.2%   2.2%  0.9%
*1989-90   47.1%  33.0%    8.7%   7.7%  3.5%
*2000      44.7%  35.2%    7.8%  10.8%  1.5% (projected)
*
*Source: Population Reference Bureau
**********

Quoting now from the article:

	"Deukmejian officials argue that gross income for schools, including
bond money for construction, has jumped by more than 100 percent over
the last eight years. Even if adjusted for inflation, they say, the
increase is 65 percent.
	Those figures are disputed by educators and others.  The state
legislative analyst, using different calculations, says that per-pupil
expenditures have gone up only 7.5 percent, when adjusted for
inflation over the past decade.  California now ranks 29th among
states in per-pupil spending, down from 24th in 1984, according
to the National Center on Education Statistics.
	'We're getting less than our fair share of revenue,' said state
Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig. ' We continue
to fall below the rest of the country.'
	The result, say Honig and other educators, is that key elements of
state's reform program for the schools are in jeopardy in some
districts."

[...]

	"To house a student population that is expanding at the rate of
150,000 per year, the state will need 2100 additional schools at a
cost of $11 billion, according to the state legislative analyst."
-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
We could say that Congress spends money like drunken sailors.  But that would
be unfair -- to the sailors.  They, at least, are spending their own money.