California Budget Challenge: K-12 Education budget cut

Course Description: This course introduces the governing institutions and political processes operating in California with an emphasis on rural and small urban places. Emphasis will be placed on local government organization, community autonomy, leadership, political change, policy development, and select policy issues including public finance.

Course Objectives:
1) Gain a basic understanding of the theory and practices of local government politics and management. Students will learn to understand the scope, powers, limitations, procedures, mandates, conflicts, constitutional and legal frames, offices, and democratic life of local government.
2) Become aware of critical analysis tools available to help understand the historical development of California government, how local and state government interact, and assess potential for change in community governance.
3) Interact with local government practitioners and political activists that inform and impact possibilities and limitations of current local government issues.

Course Expectations
1) Participate. Students are expected to have reviewed assigned materials before each class, be present in each class and discussion section, and contribute thoughts and ideas based on the reviewed materials and relevant experience.
2) Be honest. Students are expected to be familiar with and follow the Code of Academic Conduct found at . The instructor will report known or suspected violation of the Code of Academic Conduct will be reported to Student Judicial Affairs. Students aware of known or suspected violations may report them to the instructor or teaching assistants.
3) Provide notice. If a student requires additional time for assignments due to a medical condition, or a medical emergency arises, inform the instructor and your teaching assistant as soon as possible so an appropriate response is identified.

Next10 €“ California Budget Challenge

Due: Balance the budget and Submit your reflection paper and California Budget Challenge summary.

Background: Next 10 is an independent, nonpartisan organization that educates, engages and empowers Californians to improve the state’s future. Next 10 created the California Budget Challenge in 2005 to educate citizens about the state budget and the tradeoffs that are made to bring the budget into balance. The California Budget Challenge has been updated in 2013 to reflect that, for the first time in a decade, California’s budget is largely in balance. However, the state has outstanding debts of $28 billion not counting long-term pension and retiree health care costs.

Process:

1. (2 pts) €“ Complete the Next10 Budget Challenge at http://www.budgetchallenge.org/respondents/new

Read the Budget Overview, then make choices for each of the 20 categories. Note that if you do not like the initial choices on the screen, more choices s up additional ones below them. You must balance the budget to within $0.25 billion (surplus or deficit). When you are finished print the summary of your California Budget Challenge results. Note that it is acceptable for the formatting of the print-out of the summary to be imperfect as long as the summary reflects your choices.

2. (18 pts) €“ Write a reflection paper no longer than 500 words focused on one choice. Identify the benefit to implementing the choice was chosen and the challenge to implementing the choice was chosen. You may review the benefit and challenge of a single choice and explain:
? What the choice does

? Why you made the choice

? What is the (benefit OR challenge) posed by the choice

References: Support your decisions in the reflection paper with citations from at least 4 course readings. The citations are not part of the 500 word reflection paper word count limit and are required to follow the format found at http://www.cdlib.org/services/info_services/docs/UC_APA_CitationGuide_021810.pdf
Above is the information given by my professor, and below is what I want you to do.

The choice I made to write about is the K-12 Education. I think we should cut the budget of K-12 Education. My main argument is that student performance doesn’t really related to school funding. There is statistic showing State government is going to increase the funding to the low student performance schools. Every year, we are spend about 44% of whole state revenue on Education is too much. We all want every pupil could get enough funding, get good quality education, and growing up in a good environment. No child left behind should be implemented. Even though, there are statistics shows "California’s test score are among the lowest in the nation", I think speeding more money won’t increase the student performance. I had this idea base on my experience.
€“I use to be a elementary school teacher helper; that is a good rated school. I always remember the day they had a exam. The teacher told them to finish the exam in 2 hours. And then when the bell rings (it’s time for lunch break). several students said, "I haven’t done my exam". And teacher said, "It’s okay, you can finish them after lunch break. I was shocked, it is a exam! And the teacher has a practicing teaching assistance, She never teaches when the teaching assistance is there. So, based on my personal experience, I think the reason why student’s performance is very low is because there is something wrong with the school’s system.

Caution: The paper is limited to 500 words. So, The paper should all about the facts, data, and critical thinking. You shouldn’t include any person experience. No out-sourcing is required, I will upload my course materials, you can choose 4 to write about. And one thing you should keep in your mind, I am an international student, English is my second language, I don’t need any complex grammar structure sentence and fancy words to prove your English level. I only need simple and easy words and sentences structure. BUT NO GRAMMAR MISTAKE. And another thing you should keep in your mind, I am not American; I am Asian Female. So, I don’t want to see anything like "as a American", " as a white", "in my country (U.S.) and so on.

Please don’t forget to the file (CRD 158 meeting with TA)

You must visit to the website: http://www.budgetchallenge.org/respondents/new And then follow my steps and review the information very clearly. It take about an hour to review all the information because I have made the choices. You must review the pros &cons. And roll down the page, there are more detail information provided.( please review it, it will be very helpful)

Debt
1. Wall of debt: "(Spend $0.5 B) Increase the repayment of loans to special funds by $0.5 billion, enabling these loans to be repaid roughly a year earlier than expected."
2. Retire health care: "(Spend $1.0 B) Add $1 billion per year to start pre-funding future health benefits for retired state workers."
3. Pensions: "(Status Quo) Recent bargaining agreements provide for higher employee contributions toward the cost of pensions."

Spending
4. K-12 Education: "(Cut $4.0 B) Reduce spending by $4 billion, leaving per-pupil spending 21% below the national average. (the choice I decide to make argument)
5. Community College: "(Status Quo) Funding for community colleges will increase by about $600 million under Proposition 98, leaving funding at $6,000 per student and fees at $46/unit."
6. UC & CSU: "(Spend $1.0 B) Increase funding by $500 million each for UC and CSU to enable them to partially restore the 2011-12 funding reductions and rollback a portion of recent tuition increases.
7. Health Care: "(Spend $0.8 B) Reverse last year’s changes to Medi-Cal and Healthy Families."
8. Human Services: "(Status Quo) Do not make any reductions or increases in CalWORKs grants or funding for child care services."
9. Human Services, Cont.: "(Spend $0.1 B) Provide a 3.5% cost-of-living increase for age, blind and disabled recipients of SSI/SSP grants."
10. Criminal Justice: "(Status Quo) Reduce the prison population by transferring certain low-level inmates, parole violators, and juvenile offenders to counties along with funding."
11. State Government: "(Status Quo) Do not make any other changes to employee pay or other state government spending."

Revenue
12. Income Tax: "(No Change) Keep the progressive structure of the income tax but require people in the lowest bracket to pay a small amount."
13. Sales Tax: "(Cut $1.4 B) Reverse Proposition 30€²s sales tax increase, which would lower the rate by 1/4 percent."
14. Corporation Tax: "(Status Quo) The corporation tax rate should be left at its current level €” 8.84%."
15. Business Tax Credits: " (Status Quo) Don’t change any of the state’s business tax credits or deductions."
16. Individual Tax Credits: "(Status Quo) Don’t change any of the state’s personal income tax credits or deductions."
17. Car Tax: "(No Change) Change the vehicle license fee to a fee that is imposed based on a car’s fuel efficiency, with no increase in revenues."
18. Property Tax: "(Status Quo) Keep the current property tax rules."

Budget Reserve
"(Status Quo) Do not include a budget reserve, a rainy-day fund to be used in the future when revenues are not as high as anticipated, in the 2013-14 budget."