Eight New Months of Budget Struggle

Man, the Governor loves K-14 education so much!  Children are photogenic, after all.

Sadly, the love is not backed up by the numbers: his budget proposes to permanently gut the Proposition 98 floor and forgo paying back $2 billion already owed (on top of the money from the 98 suspensions last decade).

Of course, if his tax initiative passes - which assumes that he actually takes it to the ballot this time around - he is certain nearly seven billion dollars will come out of it.  I understand that the LAO finds this optimistic, but whether it's the kind of optimistic that is baseless or not I don't know.

The current teacher contract with SFUSD expires in June, so budget follies should be especially vicious locally, I think.  After all, who really needs stability or pencils?  Certainly not California's children.  Just send a cadre to go shake hands with the local politicians.  Public education is government education* - why fund it?

(Despite my resolution to avoid all coverage of Look at These Demographically Non-Representative States Vote 2012, clearly some of the GOP rhetoric is got through.)