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ACLU/SC School Fees Investigation Featured on Public Radio Documentary
The crippling impact on public education of California's recent state budget cuts is the subject of an in-depth documentary on public radio station KCLU from Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties. K-12: On The Edge provides one of the clearest and most accessible explanations of why California's public education system, once the envy of the nation, is currently in crisis. The program provides valuable insight into why the state's public schools are failing to serve large numbers of students, particularly low-income and students of color.
ACLU/SC staff attorney David Sapp is heard on K-12: On the Edge discussing our investigation of the widespread public school district practice of charging fees to students to participate in educational programming, despite a 1984 California Supreme Court decision, Hartzell v. Connell, that clearly states such fees violate the California state constitution's guarantee of a free public education.
The radio documentary provides an important context for this practice as a symptom of the broader dysfunction of California's finance and governance system for public education. With an ever-shrinking allocation of funding from the state - an annual drop of almost $1,500 per student, according to the documentary - and restrictions on how they can use much of the state funding they do receive, school districts are clearly in a financial bind. They view fees - though clearly illegal - as a way to offer the educational programming that California's citizenry have a right to expect the public schools to provide.
The documentary will be rebroadcast on Saturday, August 28, 2010, at 1:00 pm on KCLU livestream and is currently available as a podcast.
Information about the ACLU/SC's efforts to combat the unequal impact the state's budget cuts have had on students at the state's lowest performing schools is available here. Information about efforts to ensure that all students have access to adequate facilities and textbooks is available here
. Pictured: David Sapp.
