Budget and Schools

Budget Cuts in Education

Since 2003, California’s education has been affected tremendously. On January 14, 2003, education took a $5.2 billion cut targeting the most kindergarten to 12th grade. (Nissenbaum, Dion. “California Budget Plan Taps Everyone) At that time, San Jose’s Franklin –McKinley Elementary School District has been the most impacted. McKinley school district serves more than 10,000 kids, mostly poor children on the East Side. It is one of 1,300 school districts in the state that were being affected by the decision of the government at that time. This was one of the deepest budget cuts in education in California.
Many school districts were being force to let go of teachers to balance their budgets. In addition, the are forced to cut many after school programs that help kids with homework these programs usually benefit low-income families.   Now days both parents are forced to work to provide for their kids. Many of the families take advantage of the programs because they are able to save money on babysitting and at the same time kids are still learning.

The education cuts are across the board reductions, meaning that school districts would need to cancel spending on conference, field trips, and cut down on paper and pencils. Schools are being forced to layoff secretaries, custodians; clerk’s and teaches causing for expansion on class size. The expansion on class size is a big problem for the kids and teacher. When teacher have more kids and no help and in addition they don’t have the time to focus on each child. This causes for students to get low grades on some areas and some teacher to get low reviews. In some cases there are kids being promoted to the next grade due to their age when they are not meeting the school standards.
A few years ago, each teacher would have around twenty kids in class and they would also have a teachers aid that help in class. At that time kids were doing well with all their subjects and were able to pass all...