As this article was being written, Governor Schwarzenegger was no doubt adding the final touches to his state of the state address scheduled for Thursday at 10am, a speech that without even being heard, we can assume articulates a plan to once again go after public education funding. His public statements about the budget crisis and his budget proposals have all offered the same ludicrous solution—raiding public school funding in order to maintain tax relief for corporations and wealthy individuals.

Schwarzenegger has several prongs to his fiscal assault on schools this year. The backbone of this attack is the newest incarnation of his regularly effort to decimate Proposition 98, the legislation that requires a baseline amount of funding for schools, tying that amount to the state’s budget health. Proposition 98 has several formulas that are used to determine that amount, formulas that are chosen depending upon the economic climate and that have implications for the amount of funding the state is obligated to given schools the subsequent year. Needless to say, Schwarzenegger is trying to minimize what that number will be.

Prop. 98 grew out of the lean financial times imposed by the drop in tax revenue when Proposition 13 was enacted, along with efforts to equalize funding across the state so that the wealth or lack thereof of a given school district did not determine the amount of money available to schools. Prop 98 most definitely ties the hands of the sitting Governor, which is just what it was intended to do. Its purpose is to provide some measure of fiscal protection against assaults of the sort we’ve been undergoing ever since Schwarzenegger was first elected in the recall of former Governor Gray Davis.

Schwarzenegger is proposal a handful of other horrible strategies that will compromise the education of our children in order to safeguard fat back accounts.

Despite joining the 8th-grade algebra band-wagon, he wants to curtail classroom time by shortening the current school year by five days. This may sound like a small amount, but the implications are huge. As it stands now, there is barely enough time to cover the curriculum in the current time frame, particularly when teachers have to factor in time-wasting test preparation and test taking. Then there are concerns about where children will be during those five days. Summer programs aren’t set up to handle this. Many parents may not have the resources to pay for an additional week of all-day child care. Older kids will have one more week of time to fill on their own, which may be find for some, but not for others who might need more structure. And then there are labor contracts to consider—will these have to be opened up to accommodate the shortened year and if so will the net savings turn into a net loss?

Second, Schwarzenegger wants to defer from April until July payments to school districts for general operating and classroom size reduction, presumable to avoid cash layouts until the new fiscal year starts. How school districts are supposed to pay for essential costs, like staff, is less then clear, except perhaps by tapping into previously unavailable money that was restricted to support specific programs. Since another aspect of the Governor’s proposal is to permanently ease categorical funding restrictions, one doesn’t have to be too cynically minded to infer that the deferments and easing of restrictions are a package deal.

The downside to opening up categorical funding is that these monies are sometime tied to certain program goals and requirements, which aren’t necessarily being revised in kind. Additionally, while the bureaucracy of school finance can certainly be rationalized and reduced, it should be approached in a thoughtful way, and based in analysis that has clear programmatic and resource goals. This feels more like whiplash and will no doubt be implemented, if it goes forth, in myriad ways from district to district. No efficiencies are likely to be gained here, just more mess and fewer dollars.

Finally, touching again on classroom size, expanding the number of students in K-3 classrooms is absolutely the wrong move. Small classrooms make a difference for students from all backgrounds; it’s something we want more of not less, and optimally past grade 3 into all grades. This is a penny-wise-pound-foolish strategy if there ever was one, since early investments in education always pay off much more than catch-up strategies later on.

Obviously the Governor has no interest in public education, or any other public services for that matter. The news from Education Week that California ranks 47th in per-pupil-spending should be a motivator for immediate action. Instead, our schools are just a personal burden to Schwarzenegger and his peer group. There are many strategies for increasing revenue in an equitable way, by tapping into those who are not paying their fair share and have more than a comfortable ability to do so. The California Federation of Teachers has a short list of very effective financial strategies that has been public for months now, but none of them apparently are acceptable to the Governor. From closing sales tax loopholes on luxury items to eliminating legal corporate strategies of avoiding tax payments, there is significant money on the table that needs to be taken.

So, it’s time to stand up to the Governor one more time and tell him that public schools cannot be the solution to the state’s budget crisis. We can also contact our state elected officials and ask them to join us as we protect our children from what has become a regular assault by this woefully misguided head of our state.

Lisa Schiff is the parent of two children who attend McKinley Elementary School 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.