New California Governor Faces The Education Debacle

Filling the shoes of former Governor Schwarzenegger won’t be easy, but newly elected California Governor Jerry Brown is off to a decent start. Besides inheriting a huge state deficit and needing to come up with a solution for the state’s high unemployment rate, Gov. Brown also has to figure out how to get the California school system back on track. The major issue with the California school system is the fact that the state allocates nearly 40% of its entire budget to public school management. With so many Californians out of work and with a record high foreclosure rate, the state simply isn’t able to collect enough money in taxes to run its schools effectively.

Recently, one of the world’s most expensive public schools opened in Los Angeles. Tax payers shelled out a whopping $570 million to finance the project which took several years to complete. Approximately 4,000 California students will get a first class education in a school with an auditorium modeled after a popular nightclub. Politicians and school administrators have fiercely defended the construction of the school, but yet they have provided no concrete evidence that spending so much money on this facility will actually foster education. This isn’t the first time that the state has backed a multi million dollar school project. In fact, nearly 2,000 educators have been laid off in the past two year but California politicians seem to think that spending more on lavish schools will help struggling students. Without teachers, California students will almost certainly continue to fall behind in their studies.

Gov. Brown is not a stranger to politics. He served in the same capacity back in the late 70s and early 80s, but even then he did not focus on education. Critics are having a hard time believing that Brown will be more effective this time, but he claims that he is putting together a plan that will have the California school system back on track soon.