And the money will have to be paid back, potentially eating into future levels of Proposition 98 funding.Ĭhances that the Legislature will impose billions in deferrals in the 2024-25 budget: It’s not a painless tactic: Districts without cash on hand will have to borrow. In edu-speak, they’re “deferrals” - and would involve pushing back state payments to districts scheduled for May and June 2024 into July, August or later in the next fiscal year. Do what your boss does when he can’t make payroll but doesn’t want to lay you off: issue you IOUs. School lobbies will demand that legislators hold districts and community schools harmless and cut elsewhere in the state budget - to which UC President Michael Drake will reply, “You lookin’ at me?”Ī likely compromise: Pay what the Legislature appropriated for 2023-24 but dust off a Great Recession strategy. Gavin Newsom will release his first pass at the 2024-25 budget, but Legislative Analyst Gabriel Petek offered his gloomy forecast last month: a three-year projected state general fund deficit of $68 billion between $16 billion and $18 billion would be in Proposition 98, the formula determining how much funding goes to TK-12 and community colleges.ĭraining the state’s rainy-day fund for education and picking away at budgeted but unspent funding, perhaps for buying electric school buses and creating hundreds more community schools, could halve the problem.

Now, brace yourselves for the dark side of the moon. Most others will struggle to fill arts, dance and music jobs, at least initially.Ĭhances that arts will flourish in districts like 24,000-student Manteca Unified: That’s the $1 billion ballot initiative, Arts and Music in Schools - Funding Guarantee and Accountability Act, that voters passed in 2022. Manteca, known for its quality bands and providing instruments to all who need them, will be better positioned than many districts. School attendance will soar, and students will master the math of music in triads and quarter tones in districts like Manteca Unified in San Joaquin County, which will get about $3.8 million in new funding from Proposition 28. They’re redeemable with S&H Green Stamps at your local Mervyn’s. If not, grab a pencil and paper and bet your fensters for 2024. If you kept your own scorecard, go here to compare your results. It was wise advice couched as a prediction, which Gov.

I said that members of the new California College Corps, which pays college students to do community work, would become a legion of elementary school reading tutors. I predicted strikes in a half-dozen districts: Teachers struck in LA, Oakland and Rohnert Park Cotati Unified, and settled within hours of hitting picket lines in San Francisco and Fresno. I said third-grade English language test scores would plunge.

My predictions for 2023 were like my singing: off-key but not terrible.

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