When it comes to advocating for children and education, PTA is a pretty amazing organization:

In Santa Monica-Malibu,

• We have over 6,000 members (and it’s never too late to join; click here for membership info.
• We volunteer over 100,000 hours per year to make our schools even better learning communities for all children.
• We directly raise over $2 million per year for the schools in Santa Monica and Malibu.
• We have helped to advocate for policies and ballot measures that generate an additional $18 million per year for our schools.

Of course, these efforts are not just numbers and dollar signs.  They are programs, and supplies and technology and arts and beautification that directly benefit students.

I hate to dampen that glow, but I must bring in the dark cloud of budget realities.

When 75% of the funding for our schools comes from the State, and the State of California is reeling from the recession and dubious budget decisions, we know the news is bad.

Education makes up 40% of the state budget; yet it sustained 60% of the cuts in the budget agreement reached in the summer of 2009.  $17 billion were slashed from public schools statewide. 

Our District currently has a $12 million shortfall.  The School Board, Superintendent and Chief Financial Officer, with counsel from the Independent Financial Oversight Committee, are looking at a wide range of remedies simultaneously --- remedies that include enhancing revenue and making deep and painful cuts.

So we throw all these numbers around – a potential $25 billion state deficit for the coming year; continued declines until 2014; a $12 million deficit in our District; potentially $9 million in cuts in Santa Monica-Malibu for next year. 

Let’s focus on what it will mean for the 11,565 children whose lives center around being students in our 17 schools.

We don’t know for sure, but, being active PTA members, we can imagine…… We can imagine an elementary school class, could be Kindergarten, first, second or third grade.

The students are sitting, maybe cross-legged on the rug in their classroom, listening to their dedicated, patient, caring and engaging teacher. Maybe she’s reading them a story.   And instead of 4 rows of five first graders, it’s six rows.

And she needs to make sure all of them are reading that book by the end of year, not just listening to it.

Or, maybe a 9^th or 10^th grade student who is the first college-bound member of his family needs a boost in his math skills in the summer to feel comfortable taking the honors math class that will mean so much for his college applications later on. 

Except, the math class he was going to take in the summer might not be offered anymore.

Or, picture the 8-year-old friends who had planned since Kindergarten, when they were mesmerized watching older kids perform in a school concert, that they were going to choose which instrument to play in 4^th grade so they could be ready for the award-winning middle school band or orchestra. 

Now they might have to wait until sixth grade to start their music education and lose two valuable years of learning.

The images we can conjure go on and on.  Very difficult choices face our District in the coming months.

Let’s take a bit of advice from our predecessor.  Over one hundred years ago, co-founder of PTA Alice McLellan Birney said,

“Let us have no more croaking as to what cannot be done; let us see what can be done, and above all, see that it is done.”

That’s what we do in the Santa Monica-Malibu Council of PTAs.

In this new decade, this New Year of 2010, let us be grateful for what we have, especially our loved ones and our health.  Let us also be open and full of energy in the New Year to rally to Alice McLellan Birney’s call to ‘above all, see that it is done.”

Thank you for all you do!

Sincerely,
Shari L. Davis
President
Santa Monica-Malibu Council of PTAs