The Education Coalition, which includes California teachers unions and groups representing school boards, parents and administrators, has just put out a new radio ad on the state budget.

In this one, a mother and child listen to a car radio news report: "California is still facing a $15 billion budget crisis with local schools facing cuts of $4.3 billion."

The child asks the mom whether it's true, and she responds, perhaps a little bluntly: "Your fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Thomason, already got a layoff notice - along with 20,000 other educators across the state."

The child: "Mrs. Thomason?"

Mom seems to forget entirely that she's talking to a child when she says that politicians should "put partisanship aside and make education a real priority again." Or maybe the kid just has very strong vocabulary skills.

Leaving aside these quibbles, not everyone agrees on the numbers cited. The Legislative Analyst's Office says schools and community colleges would get more funding under the governor's revised budget proposal for 2008-09 than last year, although the increase is slight for K-12 schools.

The Education Coalition says schools and community colleges should get $4.3 billion more this year than they would under the governor's budget proposal. The bulk of that is from cost-of-living increases that aren't included in the budget proposal.

As for the teacher layoffs, union estimates on the initial layoff notices that went out in March ranged from 14,000 to 20,000. But many of those teachers were called back, hundreds of them in the Inland area alone.

— Shirin Parsavand
sparsavand@PE.com

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