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Concerned members of the city community came together for a rally on March 4 and a town hall meeting on Feb. 25 in order to protest the massive state budget crisis.
Thousands of teachers, parents and students assembled in front of City Hall on March 4 at 5 p.m. to protest school budget cuts. Student organizations from all over the Bay Area sent representatives to the rally to show their opposition to the state cuts. According to MECha Club members Artimais Berengi and Belen Chavez from California State University East Bay,
“This is only the beginning of many more rallies, and the time has come to show the Governor that people will unite and speak out.”
Teachers and students from across the Bay Area showed up at the rally bearing signs with messages like “Close loopholes, not schools” and “Cuts to Corporate Welfare, NOT to Public Education.” Many attendees emphasized the importance of coming out in numbers. “People have to speak out and our elected officials have to listen, we’re just throwing our children’s future down the drain,” former San Francisco Unified School District teacher Andy Blue said. “Right now the principles of where we spend money are way out of whack.”
Teachers from the district wore their United Educators of San Francisco t-shirts as a sign of solidarity with the union. “It is important to show that people are concerned about education and we recognize that public education is extremely important in maintaining our democracy,” science teacher Shawn Laureyns said. “As we cut public funding more and more we
create a system that only widens the gap between the rich and the poor and offers opportunity only to those who can pay for it.”
According to union building and anger that prevails among students, teachers, educators and parents,” he said. “People are upset that our schools aren’t getting the funds they deserve. The rally did what it needed to – put politicians on notice to propose legislation, put corporate boardrooms on notice that sooner or later the California people will demand that they pay their fair share in taxes.”
Some students did not believe the rally was as effective as it could have been. “I went just to see what was going on,” senior Thomas Tu said. “But the rally was a failure because it failed to instigate any real change.”
Many parents brought young children to the rally, some of whom are facing nearly 12 more years in the broken public school system. “The rally will increase awareness about the depth of the budget cuts, and on the state level we need structural change that won’t be just for this year,” Hanna Hart, a mother of two district students, a kindergartener and a first-grader, said.
The budget cuts are also affecting corporations such as the Arc, a non-profit organization aimed at helping individuals with developmental disabilities. “For over 30 years, City College has been sending two teachers to the Arc, but the teachers have been cut and this really hurts people with disabilities,” Arc Chief Executive Officer Timothy Hornbecker said.
Petitions to change the two-thirds majority needed in the state legislature to pass a new state budget were passed around during the rally. “Every year we have a budget gridlock, and we can’t afford to have that anymore,” Shiny Golub, a representative of Californians for Democracy, said. The organization is trying to build support for University of California-Berkeley professor George Lakoff’s proposed amendment to the state constitution to allow a simple majority to pass the budget. Supporters of the proposal claim that the current rule has prevented the state legislature from passing a budget on time and costs the state billions annually. The amendment would also repeal the two-thirds majority needed to raise taxes. The proposal drew widespread cheers from the audience.
A town hall meeting was held at Marina Middle School on Feb. 25 to discuss possible solutions for the budget crisis. A panel of state and city representatives answered questions and discussed steps on how to proceed after these cuts. Around 860 concerned parents, teachers and city officials attended the meeting. It was organized by six mothers whose children attend Sherman Elementary School. The panelists included state senators Mark Leno and Leland Yee, assemblyman Tom Ammiano, assemblywoman Fiona Ma, superintendent Carlos Garcia, Mayor Gavin Newsom, school board president Jane Kim and the United Educators of San Francisco president Dennis Kelly. The speakers discussed possible solutions on state and city levels.
The general consensus among the elected officials who attended was the need to revise Proposition 13, and to close the loopholes that have allowed corporations to avoid paying high property taxes. Prop13 was an amendment to the state constitution passed in 1978 that placed a cap on property taxes at one percent of the total value of the property. Many view Prop 13 as the reason why schools are under-funded. According to a CATO Institute article, the adoption of Prop13 cost the state billions of dollars in additional tax revenue that could have gone to education.
Several innovative proposals came from Leno and Kelly. One example was to include a one percent surcharge added onto entertainment tickets, which would raise an estimated $40 million for art and music education. A second proposal is to sell property owned by the school district, which could be used to bring in additional revenue.
The evening ended with an opportunity for audience members to ask the panelists questions. Several people in the audience vented their frustration directly toward the superintendent and other elected officials for allegedly spending funds on expanding their staff and hiring outside consultants.
Some students found the event to be educational and believed it should be held more often. “It was a very informative meeting,” sophomore Shin Sann said. “Before the meeting I did not know about the various proposals offered and how we are directly affected. The meeting has inspired me to create change after learning about our problems.”
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