What Are The Budget Cuts And How Can We Stop Them?

What we should learn from this presentation:•What the Budget cuts are?

•How they affect us?

•Why they are not inevitable?

•What we can do to stop them?

•Attending the March 4th Mass Rally in San Francisco at 5pm at Civic Center Plaza

So Let’s Review:

California’s Legislature and Governor’s office say the state has run out of money and must make spending cuts…

Every social service most people rely on is being cut

•Education

•Health Care for poor families

•Elderly Care

•Public Transportation

•State Parks

•And more…

VERY BAD!!!

How Bad are the Cuts to Education?

•California politicians have cut over $8 billion dollars in the past two years.

•California spends $1,900 less than the national average on each student

•California school districts issued 27,000 pink slips to teachers last spring. Thousands of teachers and staff were permanently laid off.

Cuts on the K-12 Level

The average high school dropout rate in California is 20 percent. In some neighborhoods in Oakland and Richmond and Los Angeles, the dropout rate is over 50 percent.

In many districts, the average class size has gone from 30 to 40 or even 60 students. Classes this size make education nearly impossible

The Los Angeles Unified School District eliminated summer school for 150,000 students in 2009.

After school programs, electives, athletics have all been cut from many schools.

Counselors, medical staff, career centers have been cut

The new Federal program has California and other states scrambling for Federal funds linked to standardized test scores.

These new laws make it easier to close down schools or sell them off to private charter schools.

Currently, in Los Angeles, about 30 high schools are under threat of either being closed down or sold off to private companies.

California’s Priorities…

Cuts to the Community Colleges

In the past two years, more than $840 million has been cut from the Community College budgets.

Classes are being cancelled and programs are being cut and eliminated.

Support programs and educational grants are being slashed – including special support programs, tutors, library services and many others.

In all schools, there are huge cuts in summer classes; in some schools summer sessions are being eliminated.

This year, an estimated 250,000 students were turned away due to a shortage of classes.

Other students aren’t getting enough units to qualify for financial aid and have to drop out.

More students are losing their jobs and are ending up homeless.

Support staff is being laid off and furloughed, meaning fewer services and maintenance.

Financial aid lines are longer. There are fewer academic and support counselors.

Faculty, especially part-time teachers, are being laid off.

And meanwhile, students are paying more for less

Since 2008, over one billion dollars has been cut from the CSUs.

Tuition has increased 152 percent since 2000, from $1650 to $4,155.

With the latest rounds of cuts, over 40,000 students will be turned away in the next two years.

There was no Spring admission for 2010.

Cuts to The CSUs

Across the CSUs, faculty have been forced to take nine unpaid days off per semester (so-called furlough days).

Over 47,000 workers have been forced to take at least two days off per month without pay.

The average student loan debt for CSU students is about $17,000.

Since 2001, fees have risen over 277 percent.

UC Regents have approved a tuition increase of 32 percent in November, making tuition over $10,000 per year.

Tuition has more than doubled since 2002.

At least eight percent of the courses have been cut.

Cuts at The UCs

Enrollment was reduced by 2,300 students for Fall 2009.

UC faculty and staff will be required to take from 11 to 26 unpaid days off -- amounting to a salary reduction of four to ten percent. Over 80 percent of faculty are affected by this cut.

The average student loan debt for UC graduates is over $25,000.

So we are paying more…

…for this

But wait there’s more…

The politicians in Sacramento have promised budget deficits of $20 billion every year for the next five years.

That’s right: more cuts on top of the old cuts.

Sacramento wants us to accept that the cuts will happen forever.

But what can we do?

California has no money?

Should we just bury our heads in the sand and give up?

If it were true that California has no money, then maybe it would

be time for despair.

But it’s a lie!

California is the wealthiest state in the country.

It is among the 10 largest economies in the whole world

California produces over 12 percent of all of U.S. wealth.

California Has Money!

California is home to 104 of the largest U.S.

Corporations. Their total profits for the year 2007:

$1,168,681,000,000That’s over one trillion dollars.

California is home to the largest number of billionaires in the country

And as California has been slashing education, it has been handing over even more money to corporations in tax cuts.

That is more money in tax cuts every year than the amount of money cut from education and health care combined.

And that’s just the wealth in California…

There’s even more wealth on the federal level…

The U.S. has 24 percent of the world's wealth produced in one year, or $14.29 trillion.

The U.S. has 45 percent of the world’s 793 billionaires.

The government has already paid $3.5 trillion to corporations to bail them out. Estimates of the total cost and debt go as high as $23 trillion.

In 2008, total corporate profits in the U.S. were $1.36 trillion.

Here’s what that looks like:

And what about war spending?

So far, the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost $950 billion in Congressional appropriations alone.

Californians alone have paid 115 billion tax dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

U.S. war spending alone accounts for 48 percent of all the money ($1.47 trillion) spent on war across the world each year.

How many days of War Spending would it take to pay for the entire California budget Deficit of $26 billion?

One Month!

So, are the Budget Cuts inevitable?

Absolutely Not! There is plenty of money in California and at the Federal level to fully fund education and make no cuts to social services.

If there is plenty of money, then why does there continue to be severe cuts, year after year?

Why do the politicians in Sacramento, year after year, CHOOSE, to pass massive budget cuts while granting tax breaks?

They expect us to just put our heads down and accept these cuts quietly

But we don’t have to!

Sacramento went too far this time. They’ve attacked all of us, all at once.

They’ve created the possibility for all of us to stand together and say no!

Everyone we know is connected to education in some way.

And we are all impacted by these cuts.

Together, we have the power to force Sacramento to stop these cuts, and fund education and the services we need.

At the community colleges we are connected to every level of education and all sections of society…

We have parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts who are students or teachers or workers. We ourselves also work while we go to school…

There are over 3 million students in the California Community College system.

We can be the hub of the wheel that builds a mass movement against these budget cuts.

How do we begin?

Start here. You can download flyers, information packets, and this presentation.

Become an organizer wherever you are.

Tell people about the budget cuts.

In your classes, at work, on the bus, at home.

EVERYONE AND EVERYWHERE

And most importantly…

Come to the Mass Rally on MARCH 4th at 5pm in San Francisco Civic Center

This is a rally for everyone who is against the cuts to education.

It will be the first rally with all levels of education coming together.

From pre-school to Phd.

This is a rally you can bring your grandparents to and your

grandchildren, everyone all together.

Why a Mass Rally?

•No single rally will put a stop to these budget cuts. Sacramento has hunkered down and is ready to impose increasingly worse cuts.

•But a Rally is a first step.

•It is our chance to come together and prove to ourselves that we are not alone.

•To prove that we are united together.

•And to convince ourselves that we have the power to fight back.

Think of the rally as a beginning.

It is our warning to Sacramento, that we are gathering our forces and we are ready to fight back and stand up for our education and our lives.

This struggle is not going to be easy.

And there is no guarantee that we will win

But these are our lives.

What choice do we have…

We leave you with this…

People are practical. They want change but feel powerless, alone, do not want to be the blade of grass that sticks up above the others and is cut down. They wait for a sign from someone else who will make the first move, or the second. And at certain times in history, there are intrepid people who take the risk that if they make that first move, others will follow quickly enough to prevent their being cut down. And if we understand this, we might make that first move.

Would someone please read this aloud:

See you there!