Governor Jerry Brown has spared California’s K-12 public schools from a direct financial blow in his 2011-2012 budget proposal that he unveiled this past Monday. Either Brown himself truly understands how near the breaking point our schools are (perhaps due to his time as Mayor of Oakland) or he’s listening to surprisingly well-informed advisors (for instance, retired Stanford education professor Michael Kirst, who wrote his unexpectedly solid campaign position paper on education), or the voices of public education supporters have actually been heard by someone in elected office. Whatever the case, Brown explicitly called out that K-12 schools have taken more than their fair share of funding cuts under the Schwarzenegger years.

Despite the protection of K-12, Brown’s budget summary document provides a grim view of the months ahead for the state as a whole. In it, he projects a $25.4 billion budget gap for 2011-12 and forecasts that revenues will fall behind committed program costs for some time to come. (For those who want a more concise overview than the lengthy budget summary, the California Budget Project has provided an excellent analysis). The Governor has three basic strategies for addressing this.

First, he is calling for a major restructuring over the next several years of more than $10 billion in services and related funding, pushing delivery down to county and municipal levels. Brown argues that over the last several decades, legislation of all sorts (including but not limited to Proposition 13), has been passed that has shift fiscal and programmatic responsibilities to the state level, where they less effectively and efficiently meet public needs. Programs target towards this restructuring in this upcoming budget cycle fall under a loosely defined “Public Safety” umbrella, and encompass things like forestry and fire protection; court safety; certain probation programs; juvenile justice; mental health services; foster care; and more.

On the face of it the proposals make sense, services should be managed as close to those providing and receiving them as possible. But, the risk is in the funding levels and the degree to which we can be sure that the existing funding streams supporting these services will actually make their way down to the local levels that are being handed the responsibility for service provision. Given the recently passed strict 2/3 threshold for levying local taxes, local governments may not have the flexibility Brown imagines to adjust their budgets according to their newly expanded community roles. Such a scenario reveals a related risk, that there may be variations in the quality of those services from community to community.

The second component of Brown’s budget is cuts to social programs that will undoubtedly in turn impact our schools. Health care cuts for poor families will include reduction of vision benefits, increased premiums and co-pays. CalWORKS benefits for poor families will also be reduced by cutting the amount of time families can receive benefits. SSI benefit levels will be decreased, as will in-home care services.

As the Governor’s introduction to his budget proposal clearly details, California residents are still suffering mightily from the effects of this recession and these cuts will add to that, keeping or pushing more families into poverty. And poverty is a school issues, as anyone spending anytime in public schools can tell. Just recently, analysis of international student achievement data has underscored that fact once again, as if we needed anything other than common sense to understand this fact. Indeed, one could make a very strong argument that addressing the increasing levels of child poverty in this country is the single most important task for improving public education in this country.

In terms of education, Brown has focused his efforts to cut at the higher education level, landing the University of California and California State University systems with $500 million each in cuts to absorb. K-12 has been largely spared. Cost of living increases (COLAs) will not occur for 2011-2012, but budget flexibility around categorical spending (i.e. spending that is targeted for a specific use) is proposed to be extended for two more years, reserve funds can be smaller, and other similar proposals are in place. A significant and somewhat symbolic savings chunk also came in the elimination of the duplicative Office of the Secretary of Education.

The third leg of Brown’s financial stool is extending existing revenue streams that were enacted last year, and closing some loopholes in corporate taxes. This component depends on voters and given both the tough economic times and the rhetoric around public services and public revenues, will require lots of legwork and door-knocking to ensure passage.

Governor Brown’s budget proposal is tough to swallow, even without K-12 hits, and is premised on a dramatic restructuring of state services that will be complicated and lengthy to implement, even assuming that there is no push-back from the legislature. At the end of the day, our revenues are still out of line with the costs of what we consider to be essential services. Other revenue sources are out there, such as the oil severance tax, increasing taxes on the highest income tax bracket, and of course the revision of Proposition 13. Brown has mentioned the latter as a possibility and so we can hope that the revenue strategies he has his sights on for the upcoming election are as moderate as they are in preparation for something much larger.

Lisa Schiff is the parent of two children in the San Francisco Unified School District and is a member of Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco and the PTA and is a board member at the national level of Parents for Public Schools.