California Is Spending More Per Student Than Ever. Will Schools Get Better? | Gloria Romero

Enrollment in California schools are dropping significantly, but the budget is staying constant, meaning per student schools are going to get a lot more money. Today we sit down with Gloria Romero, who's an education reform advocate in California. She's here to tell us what will happen to school systems in California and why. California had the second largest school system in the nation, only behind New York. At one point, the students enrolled was over 6 million. In Los Angeles Unified, for example, over 650,000 kids. If you look at it today, it hovers, I think, just above 450, 460,000. And so everybody's asking why, what happened, and then what are the consequences? I'm Siamak. Welcome to California Insider. Gloria, it's great to have you back on. Welcome back. Thank you. It's good to be with you again. We want to talk to you about a phenomenon that's happening in California now. It's a trend, and enrollments are dropping for K-12. It's going to drop by even 10% this coming decade. Some schools are talking or thinking about closing. Can you tell us what you're seeing in this space? Right. This is something that has been happening, trending downward over the last few years. And for example, California had the second largest school system in the nation, only behind New York. At one point, the students enrolled in the California public education system was over 6 million. In Los Angeles Unified, for example, over 650,000 kids. If you look at it today, it hovers, I think, just above 450, 460,000. So that's been a dramatic decline. And so everybody's asking why, what happened, and then what are the consequences? So I think one thing certainly is if we look to understand what happened, what I think first and foremost, the pandemic. And what happened, the response to the pandemic, when parents saw for the first time what was actually going on in the classroom. Remember, they shut the schools down. You could see everything. You could see. And that's not the entirety of it, but that was really one of the first times that parents really got to be one of those when they say a fly on the wall. You know, when they say, I'd like to be a fly on the wall and see what's really happening. Parents got to be the flies on the wall and they were looking. And so many parents were just horrified. This is instruction. This is indoctrination. So many parents began to take their children out, homeschool during COVID. And then after the pandemic and the schools reopened again, finally, then parents decided, I'm not putting my kid back in there again and looked for alternatives, including homeschooling or maybe charter schools or religious schools. So there were things there. Other factors, of course, are declining birth rate. And that is a factor, but there has been declining birth rate for a while. Another big issue that we've seen in California is because of, I think, the mismanagement of the current administration. We have seen, you know, hundreds of thousands of people fleeing California. And these are mostly young families who have just said, we can't afford a house. Our kids will never be able to own a home here. And they have packed up their bags and they have left, you know, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Florida, they've gone and taken their families with them. So there's a lot of contributing factors to the decline. But you're absolutely right. There is a noticeable decline in enrollment in all of public education. And really the biggest place, ground zero, is basically Los Angeles Unified. The budget for schools is set, right? Are these schools going to keep getting the same budgets? Well, that is the political minefield. It is so interesting. And most people have really no idea about how funding works for schools in California. I would even submit to you that most legislators in California can't figure this out. There are formulas that you have to put together. And it basically goes back to what's known as Proposition 98. Prop 98 is what we use as And what Proposition 98 was, was basically an initiative that was brought to you by, guess whom? The California Teachers Association. Now, why would they bring forth an initiative if it was just simply neutral and to take away funding from schools? Like, no, no, no. It's kind of like the school lottery. When people say, well, I buy lottery tickets, it's supposed to No, no, no. You have to read the fine print. Maybe a few dollars go to the schools. The rest, you know, who knows where that money goes? So Proposition 98 put forth a formula. Without going into all the weeds and the details, basically it essentially assured that all of our education system, starting with TK, you know, onward, including colleges, get almost 40% of the entire state budget. Okay, 40%. That's almost half. So 40% of the entire state budget is going to go to education. By formula. By formula, brought to you in the written word by the Teachers Union and of course its affiliates, the alphabet soup of education special interests who put that initiative together. And the people of California voted for it. And you know, when you look at on the ballot, I think many people looked and said, we believe in education. You know, I want to see strong public schools. So people voted for that thinking, okay, we'll invest in education and we want our schools to succeed. We want our children to succeed. So I think there was a good reason why people wanted to support it. But what has happened since then? Essentially, the entire budget, when the politicians are meeting and working with the governor and trying to figure out a budget for the state of California, you basically have to start with Prop 98 because that's almost half the entire state budget. And then everything else gets fit in. You might remember former president pro tem Don Perotta. He was somebody that I served with. I was majority leader at the time. Senator Perotta from Oakland. I remember when he was first elected by the Democrat caucus and then the entire Senate to be the president pro tem. He made an observation and he stood up and he said it and it's what everybody thinks, but he said it out loud. And what he said was something like, I'm paraphrasing him, but essentially he said, Prop 98, we need to look at it because it's essentially a runaway escalator in California. Oh my gosh, you should have seen what happened in Sacramento. The teachers union, you know, sort of, you know, the political heavyweights there were very angry at the president pro tem. And what they did was they actually posted, and it was them and their colleagues. So again, these billboards went up in Oakland, in Don Perotta's hometown, basically accusing him of shutting down, selling out public education. And his crime was basically, he said, we should re-examine Prop 98. The way I look at it is it was essentially a message. If they can do that to the president pro tem, it was really the equivalent of sending the horse's head, you know, mafioso to every member of the legislature. You dare speak up against this. You dare try to do anything. We will come after you. What happened to him? Well, he continued as the pro tem, but he had to stop talking about, well, he continued, but tone it down. And it basically began to undermine his strength in Sacramento. That happened right at the beginning of his term. And so it really put like a bit of a chill effect on people. So, so what does that mean? And that was back in what, 2005, maybe when that happened. So fast forward, 21 years. And basically we have Prop 98. Nothing's been done with it. Each year, depending upon is the economy up or down, you have to look at this little formula. It's almost like the Wizard of Oz. Nobody understands it. And you have to go back and get the mathematicians and everybody and figure out, you know, what does it mean? How much money do we go in? The bottom line is that essentially the formula pretty much ensures that year after year, education continues to take up almost half the entire budget. So to go to your question, then what does it mean? We've seen that in California with the declining enrollment, that's going to bring about questions of, okay, if you have fewer bodies in the schools, should not the state of California spend less money on education? Because you would think if you have fewer customers, you know, you don't spend as much, but Sacramento doesn't work on common sense. And especially with the most powerful political entity in California. So what I suspect will happen is that even with declining enrollment, there's going to be ways to adjust for the declined enrollment. It might say something like, oh, but we need to have special training in order to do something on whatever the issue might be. Or we might need additional broom closets. We might need additional spaces. Once you get money, it is very hard to claw it back. And I think that's what's going to happen. I'm a supporter of public education. Absolutely. You know, education is the key to the American dream, but I am the biggest critic of how we do public education in California and how we fund it. And right now we are finding that with the governor's new budget, he put out a proposal for all pupils to get basically $28,000 per year. And we still have terrible achievement outcomes. So basically he wants to put more money in without looking at the results and no reforms to Prop 98, no discussion about the decline in population. So there's going to be a fight about that. People will want to hang on to their piece of the pie. And with a powerful organization like the education lobby in Sacramento, I suspect, I believe they're going to hang on to it. And the rest of the programs basically, you know what, you're on your own. The class sizes must get smaller, right? Do you think the quality could go up? No, no. And I'll tell you what, and it's sad to say this, but right now in California, we're still one of the highest across the nation investments in education. However, the biggest one is New York. And it's so interesting because New York city, they invest about $44,000 per student. Exactly. Wow. But then you look at their outcomes and they're just as bad as California. So you have to ask, where does the money go? And the reason I say no, it's because the significant reforms in education have not taken place. We don't have reforms on the teacher tenure laws. We don't have reforms in how we teach children to read. It's phonics. Probably the way that most of us who are older in California, you were taught phonics and you have to learn to read before you then read to learn. And even math, you can't do math anymore by just adding numbers. It's not multiplication tables anymore. We just had to memorize, right? Today, you have to read word problems. So reading is a critical skill for success and we've completely blown it. I was looking at statistics last night, in fact, for the state of California, because every year we do the testing of students in California, less than half are able to read at the basic level of proficiencies that the state has established. And yet it goes on and on. And it's even worse if you look at low income children. If you look at Latino and African American kids, it's a crime. It really is. It should be a moral outrage. It should be a civil rights fight. Latino children, it's about 70% of Latino children are not reading at the basic level of proficiency that's needed and has been established by the state of California. And it even goes up higher when it comes to mathematics. And African American children fare even worse. So then the question becomes, well, is it just, you know, is it just those kids? No, there's nothing biological about learning. And so you have to then look at the system and that's where we go into all of the reforms that we have tried to make in California via initiative, via legislation. They've all been shot down. The biggest one, the most important variable in a classroom, it's the teacher. If you have a high caliber teacher who understands instruction and is able to maintain a classroom and communicate and work for learning, we will see the closing of those achievement gaps and accelerated learning. And so it starts with the teacher. But then you look at California, it's not based on merit pay. It's not based on some measure. And I've advocated 20% of a Today it's zero, nada, nothing. It's basically you breathe, you show up and you get your full paycheck no matter what. And tenure in California is granted on the books after two years in the classroom. In reality, because of the rules and the regulations and the mandates, it's 18 months. So you teach for 18 months, you're fresh out of a teacher training program and you've got basically a job for life because we know that once you're in the system, it's virtually impossible to fire a bad teacher for sexual assault and for incompetence. So that's what happens. Then you start going into where are the low performing teachers assigned. I don't know if you've ever seen that documentary, Waiting for Superman. It's a wonderful film that shows what they call the Dance of the Lemons, where the poorest performing teachers basically get shuffled because of the teacher contracts that are negotiated. And they get sent into the more low income communities where maybe parents don't understand the contracts and are less likely to complain. So it's this system that goes on and unless you change that, starting with teacher caliber and changing the tenure, putting meritocracy, having teachers perform for some advancement, we continue with what we have. Is there a certain grade that this happens? You mentioned people need to first read, learn how to read, then learn what they read. So is there a trigger point? Is it on the first grade or is it a second grade where that happens, where somehow the kids don't learn? The grade that across the country that people look at is third grade, age nine. And a lot of kids, depending on their background and their experiences, they might have had access to literature, vocabulary, books. So maybe some are reading kindergarten, first grade, oftentimes exposure. And that's where phonics is, you're sounding out the words. Second grade, really beginning to improve. But by third grade is really the time when across the country the experts in reading basically say, if you're not reading by age nine, you're going to fall behind. Because everything after that, it's all based on comprehension. And if you're still trying to learn how to read, you're not going to comprehend what's in front of you on the page. So third grade is looked at critically. I used to be very actively involved with also not only education, but our prisons in California when I served in the legislature. And I don't know if it's urban legend, but many people will say that many of those in government who are planning for prison expansion will look at the proficiency rates and the reading achievement by fourth grade to begin to determine, you know, do we have to build more prisons? And when I was in the legislature and visiting really virtually all of our prisons, the statistic that always stood out to me was that 70 percent of inmates in California don't have a high school diploma. 70 percent. And I believe, you know, you do the crime, you do the time, but you have to look at those statistics, those correlations. And many inmates in prison, and that's why I supported so much the corrections, rehabilitation, the ability for inmates to get a GED to complete their work because they're going to parole out at some time. And many of the inmates would say, you know, basically they wish that they had learned reading education. So it's sort of a circle. It's a vicious circle. And in my mind, given the extent of the budget, it all starts with education. And there's so many issues involved there. And the teachers union, I'm not their favorite person by any extent, nor the classified union either, because I will bring these issues up and I will put it there and say, if we don't change education, we're not going to change the state. We're not doing anything for the kids in the system. And so to go back to your question was what's happening, that's what I think finally parents do recognize. Something's wrong here. My little boy, little Juanito or little Johnny can't read. And then that's when they might start saying, I'm going to look for an alternative. And when I was in Sacramento, that's what I focused on was also giving parents choices to exit schools that the state of California itself said, these are failing school. They always say, well, they're chronically underperforming. I just said they're failing. And I wanted to give pathways to parents to exit the system and find an alternative. The way the system is set up from what I'm gathering, it's the worst performing teachers end up with the students that are struggling the most. Bingo. You understand it completely. And it shouldn't be that way. You know, I actually authored legislation that said, okay, let's do bonus pay. Some people call it combat pay. And I think, okay, maybe we won't have to say you're going into a war zone, but you get the idea. Give the incentive. Let's attract like high-performing teachers, come and teach in some of the most challenging schools, come and work with kids. Maybe make it a challenge. Exactly. But these initiatives, for the most part, batted away. Like we've got to treat all teachers equally. And they didn't believe in this. And the argument being that if you start doing merit pay, incentive pay, it catches on. Because I will tell you, as a critic of our current education system, I very much respect that the rank and file teachers, most teachers, they want to be treated as professionals. And most rank and file teachers will be able to point out, this one's bad, this one's good. And they want the training. But right now, there's no reward. There's no incentive. And if anything, then you just get thrown in. There's not the support, because even the money that's going to the system, it doesn't go into the classroom, per se. I mean, take a look at administrative salaries. I'm always amazed at, I'll pick on Los Angeles Unified, which has the highest paid superintendent in the country. And what, just a couple of months ago? We had some corruption. Yeah. I mean, the FBI raided the office, and he's out on, still, paid administrative leave. Well, what's happened to that? So you get these deans, you get administrative layers, you get a bunch of stuff that's not part of the curriculum. And my belief is, we have to get back to the fundamentals. You know, reading, writing, arithmetic. If we did nothing else, but just focus on reading, reading, reading, I think that we could turn around education. It's going to take a while, but you've got to start by recognizing the elephant in the room. And it's that our kids cannot read. And if they're not reading, they're not learning, they're not succeeding, but they're being passed along. Now, Gloria, what you're saying, it shouldn't impact the unions, right? If they have some merit pay, why are they not going that direction or not trying it? The arguments that used to be thrown at me when I was advocating for merit pay and for incentive pay was that, well, it creates an unhealthy competition amongst each other, and then we start fighting from within. And I look back, and I think that becomes the roots of this whole equity argument, that you almost have to treat everybody the same. Like, almost like all teachers are just robotons, and you basically say, this much for you, and no incentive for you, because otherwise you create this competition. And I think that it undermines that, you know, not everybody is at the level that they should be. And you can learn from the masters, but it's almost like this socialistic, you know, think about it. Everybody has to be a robot and march at the same pace. It was unbelievable because, you know, I was a professor at Cal State LA for a number of years. I'm Professor Emeritus now after my retirement, but you would see that as well. You could identify, you know, good professors and people that I thought, I want to learn from in their presentation or how they did their methodology, how they communicated, because you would see the good professors and the not so good professors. And I would see also Cal State LA, a working class college. Most of the students entering the university at that time were first generation college students who like me, you know, their parents hadn't gone to college. I was, you know, my mother had a sixth grade level of education, but I would see the kids coming in. I call them kids, but you know, the students coming into the university, and most of them were coming from, East LA, the East side school, San Gabriel Valley. And once again, back then they would come into the university in those days and still there were remediation programs going. Vast majority of these kids coming in right away, they'd be tested and tagged saying, you're not at college level work. And then the students had to then go into remedial programs, especially for math or writing. And what they were doing was they were using their time in college to do remedial studies that they should have had in high school or as they moved along. And while they were in college, they had to use their college scholarships because many had financial aid to spend on remediation. And none of those courses counted for graduation credit. So it helps to explain why today in California, it no longer takes four years to get a bachelor's degree. It's like seven years. And then students drop out or they don't come back. And same thing is happening at UC San Diego. There was this study that some kids couldn't do math at even middle school grade level. Exactly. I mean, this is one that really shocked people. Although if we've been looking at education, we shouldn't be shocked. But the fact that this happened at UC San Diego, you know, the University of California system is a prestigious university system known around the world. And we have some really... It's hard to get into UC San Diego. It's one of the best UC schools. Exactly. You're exactly right. And that's what we find, especially at UC San Diego, where it's really very competitive. They put out a report a couple of months ago, I think, saying that one of every eight students that had been admitted to the university had to be put into remediation. They couldn't do math. They couldn't do college level work. And people were shocked at that, like, what is going on? But that's exactly what happens when you have, starting from, you know, kindergarten through middle school, through high school, just passing along the social promotion. Then they get admitted because there's no... The system has ended the use of SATs or other, you know, types of testing. So people are brought in on some bigger characteristics and you get passed along. And then you end up in the university and you're told you can't do college level work. And it is a crisis. Because not only for the student, the university, but think about the workforce. You know, we've got to get students who are, whether you go to college or not, career ready. And many of our careers today, it takes a lot more sophisticated knowledge and skill and reading. Most workforce places, you have to read. Look at the big controversy over the driver's licenses in California for the commercial trucks. They can't read the traffic signs. So reading is part of everything. If you can't read, how do you survive? Gloria, now you are getting back into politics again. Can you tell us what you're doing? Well, I'm running for lieutenant governor of the state of California. And I'll be honest, I never thought that I would get back into politics again after I left Sacramento. And over the years, many people would say, Gloria, run for this or run for that. And, you know, it just didn't appeal to me. And I thought it's not necessary. And there was so much work I was doing. I continued along education reform, working with parents, working to help charter schools get started. So I was busy. But this time it made sense. And I'm actually running as what we call the running mate with Steve Hilton, who's running for governor on this thing we call the golden ticket. And basically identifying Steve Hilton for governor, me for lieutenant governor, Michael Gates for attorney general, Herb Morgan for controller, so that people understand this is a ticket. This is basically the cabinet of a new administration to make California golden again. And so I'm running for lieutenant governor. A lot of people think that it's a job about nothing. I sometimes laugh and say it's like the Seinfeld. People, people have no idea who the lieutenant governor does. Exactly. They have no idea. I mean, up and down the state of California, you know, because I'm a teacher, I used to tell them, raise your hand if you know who the lieutenant governor is. And maybe in a room of 100 or 200, maybe maybe four hands would go up for five hands. Nobody knows. But the lieutenant governor is basically you're a heartbeat away from the governorship. So God forbid, should something happen to the governor, you'd be looking at the next governor of the state of California. So you have to channel J.D. Vance. I go, it'd be kind of like I'd be like, you know, like the vice president, kind of similar. Exactly. But we have to run separately. So even though I would be lieutenant governor, we still have to run on our own. Everybody has to be elected. You can be a lieutenant governor for somebody else. Exactly. Exactly. And then again, as I say, whoever the people send to California, if I am so honored to be elected and to serve, my commitment is this is who the people sent. I would be a lieutenant governor that would work with whomever is there. I have my preference, of course, but you you follow what the people have sent. You get past campaigning. You have to govern. But the lieutenant governor is well, you're the president of the Senate. And I was the majority leader when I was in Sacramento. And that's really important because remember, the first thing that a governor has to do is make the nominations for all of the appointments on every department, all the secretaries that are there, you know, the cabinet heads, all of the boards and commissions, the State Board of Education, the University of California, the regents, all of those. So day one, I would sit down and meet with all 40 senators to begin to talk about the process of the nominations, the confirmation process to move those forward. Because if the governor does not get the cabinet that he or she would want, then you're really dealing with a lot of issues. And we don't want the law fair where there's the blocking of that. So that's critical at the beginning. But then the exciting part for me, and really what attracted me to really say, yes, I'll do this is because the lieutenant governor does serve on every board of higher education in California, you know, regents for the UC. And we just talked about the University of California. And there's so much more. You know, I'm one of those persons who I know what a woman is. So I will defend Title IX. I'm going to defend girls and women's sports. I'm going to make sure there's no anti-Semitism in our universities. I saw with horror what happened at UCLA, where Jewish students had to be barricaded out of fear of their lives. And, you know, I have been to Israel twice. I made a personal pilgrimage to Auschwitz. I think everybody, if you get a chance to go to Auschwitz, so that we really know what never forget means. And I represented East LA. And East LA, once upon a time, it was a Jewish community. So I always felt there was like this connection there between Latinos, largely in East Los Angeles, and the Jewish community, faith, family, history, food. We always talk about food, whether you're in the Latino or the Jewish community. So there was a real affinity there, I think. So I would serve on these boards, a trustee for Cal State system, on the community college board of trustees as well. And I'm a product of those three systems, as well as having been a professor in all three. And of course, it's my passion. Education is my passion. So one of the first things I would do under the auspices of the Lieutenant Governor's office is to create a TK through 16 education pipeline. So we can look at all of these issues that we've talked about on reading and math and preparedness and moving students through that pipeline, and then developing choice and alternatives for everybody. And then as Lieutenant Governor, I would serve on the Coastal Commission. I would serve on the Land Commission, the Coastal Commission. We've seen the state burn down, fire mitigation policies. I want to advocate for those. And especially my big thing too, serving on the Coastal Commission. I'm a Latina from East LA. I am not giving up my gas stove in the name of climate change, because I tell people, you cannot toast a tortilla in a microwave. You need the gas, you need the stove. And so I'm saying, no, you know, save the tortilla. And in the Coastal Commission, I will take that message. There's nothing climate change about that. We're not giving up our gas stoves. It's too important to so many people in California, starting in East Los Angeles. Are there any other issues that you're looking into right now for California? This is one that it's a personal issue of mine. I have a little rescue dog. And as I go up and down the state of California, people have gotten to know him. His name is Tubby. And he's actually now very trained and he has his registration, but he's a wonderful little dog who had been abandoned actually during COVID. And I happened just one day to be looking on next door when I saw, here's a lost little dog. Could somebody just watch him overnight? Six years later, here I am. So I began to say, okay, during COVID, the shelter was closed. So they asked, would I foster him? Sure, I can foster him during these days. And there's an intensive search for the owners. The owners never came forward. So I adopted little Tubby, as he's known, a little Shih Tzu. But it really began my passion, my interest in looking at the welfare of animals. And I'll always point out in the good book, in the book of Genesis, very first chapter, I think by the third verse, God blesses the creatures of the earth, the animals, the birds in the sky and the little ones. So God blessed our little fur babies. So I always think it's a message that we should understand or sort of our place in terms of the blessings that God above gave to us. And so what I've done is I've made it somewhat of a mission when I go around the state to talk about animal cruelty. I was on Skid Row, downtown LA, just recently talking to people and some of the rescuers there where we see dogs being given fentanyl or dogs being bred. They do the breeding. It's an exchange for sex or for drugs, the conditions being changed. It really is amazing what we see there. And we've got to turn that around. And there hasn't been a lot of support for our animal shelters. So I want to highlight that. I want to encourage people to think about, you know, rescue and adoption, but we've got to provide the support for the shelters. And in any given year across the country, in California, there might be something like four, four million dogs that are sent to shelters. Many of them are, they're supposed to be no kill, but they're not. But they don't have the capacity. They don't have the capacity. So you'll find over 400,000 each year being killed. And these are healthy pets. So part of them can be, you know, can we get the assistance? Can we stop perhaps the purchase of animals and get the, you know, the adoption? How do we promote that while we encourage and adopt policies to stop, you know, the prolific breeding of animals? And so there's so many things there. So I've really taken that on. And as Lieutenant Governor, I want to create this statewide network so that we focus on this. We look at this because, you know, so many Californians are pet lovers. We have our little fur babies, as we call them, whether it's a cat or a turtle or a dog, whatever. And they play such an important role also in recovery, whether they're veterans or people who are recovering elderly. Even inmates have also had some dog training programs as well. It's a beautiful story. So I've been an advocate and under the Lieutenant Governor's office, I would create this special network to really connect people up and down the state so that we get attention to our animal shelters. They are hardworking and we want to promote life and promote how do we well treat our little beloved for even two-legged little creatures. So that's what I would do, a special initiative all because of my little tubby who I rescued and adopted. And they often say we don't we don't rescue them, they rescue. Gloria, we're going to check in back with you soon in the near future. Thank you for coming back. It was great to have you on, California. Thank you so much. Thank you. Tell us what you think about California and education. How do you think we can improve the school system in California? Make sure to email us at cmi.californiasider.com or comment. We read all of your emails and comments. I'm CMI Korami. This is California Insider. We'll see you next time.