{"id":398,"date":"2011-03-23T17:12:25","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T00:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=398"},"modified":"2011-03-23T17:13:35","modified_gmt":"2011-03-24T00:13:35","slug":"the-elephant-on-the-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=398","title":{"rendered":"The Elephant on the Mountain:"},"content":{"rendered":"

or how to talk about public education without mentioning the financial crisis hardly at all<\/h2>\n

I had a good time at Tuesday’s self-styled Education Summit. \u00a0United Way, which put on the meeting, did a fine job of organizing and packed a lot of content and good will into a half-day. \u00a0I’ve written a cover story and some thoughts for Thoughts on Public Education<\/a><\/strong> and Conditions of Education in California<\/a><\/strong>. \u00a0But I was taken by the failure to join the issue of the current financial crisis.<\/p>\n

Maybe I don’t get it, but as I recall, school districts in the state issued 19,000 layoff notices last week and a very large percentage of these will become real layoffs if two things don’t happen soon.<\/p>\n

First, the legislature has to authorize an election in June. \u00a0Second, voters have to agree to extend current taxes…not raise them, simply extend them.<\/p>\n

Anyone who read today’s papers<\/a><\/strong> knows that there is a stalemate in Sacramento. \u00a0Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to close the state $26 Billion deficit through a combination of tough love expense cuts, which come on top of last year’s cuts, and extension of existing taxes has garnered a solid wall of Republican opposition.<\/p>\n

At the summit, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pled for help with revenue as did incoming Los Angeles Unified superintendent John Deasy. \u00a0But I did not hear one person from the business community, the Chamber of Commerce, the United Way or anyone else get up and say: “we can deliver a Republican vote.” \u00a0No one even threw a snowball at the elephant.<\/p>\n

I do not believe that a new round of civic engagement in education will get traction until the business community comes to the table ready to make a deal with the elephant on the mountain. \u00a0Unless they are willing to speak truth to the power of the Republican Party, the folks at the summit will have a disappointing view.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

or how to talk about public education without mentioning the financial crisis hardly at all I had a good time at Tuesday’s self-styled Education Summit. \u00a0United Way, which put on the meeting, did a fine job of organizing and packed a lot of content and good will into a half-day. \u00a0I’ve written a cover story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,12,6,15,7],"tags":[17,190,187,16,188,18],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}