Brown promises austere budget at forum focused on education - San Jose Mercury News

SACRAMENTO -- Gov.-elect Jerry Brown had some words of advice for those gearing up for the budget he will propose next month: "Please sit down if you're reading the stories on the budget on Jan. 10. If you're driving, fasten your seat belt because it's going to be a rough ride."

That much has been evident from the hard truths Brown continued to unleash Tuesday at UCLA during a forum focusing on where education fits in the state's overall revenue picture. It was his second budget forum in seven days, and Brown made it clear that few people will emerge unscathed as the Legislature seeks a way out of a potential $28.1 billion hole.

After being cheered at the start of the forum, Brown said, "I don't know if you'll be cheering after the budget comes out."

But Brown also telegraphed what some took to be hints that he is laying the groundwork to take a tax hike initiative to voters in the spring.

"I think the signals are clear that he'll push through an austerity budget with an all-cuts budget early in the year, and he'll say if you don't like it, here are the revenues we need," said Robert Cruickshank, editor of the liberal Calitics.com blog.

Brown said he wanted to complete the budget in 60 days, saying, "I don't think we have a lot of time to waste" -- a hint suggesting that he would like to allow the bad news of harsh cuts time enough to sink into voters' minds before a spring special election.

"Where

I see openings that will pave the way for positive initiative, then I'm going to lead the charge," Brown said. "But I'd want to do it very carefully and very thoughtfully because I want to make sure we succeed."

Brown even drifted into soliloquies that warmed the hearts of liberals, referring to California's deficit as a fraction of the state's overall wealth and talking about the harmful effects of the "redistribution" of income to the wealthy.

"Income redistribution that's occurred upward from the middle class and below is now at a level comparable to pre-Depression 1920s," he said. "So what we are facing is not only a budget deficit. We're facing a societal crisis, and we will only resolve it as we understand it and we work not only to exercise a discipline, which has been sadly lacking, but also a fairness that enables everybody to feel they have an honest stake in the whole society. That's the larger picture here."

He called the current era, with widening gaps between the wealthy and middle class, "a very difficult period. We've never had it before. It may be worse than the Depression in terms of political pressures, the tearing of the social fabric."

Those who are the most privileged, he said, "really have to take the lead" in resolving the fiscal crisis. He said that group includes government agencies, which can do "a lot more with less."

Education officials urged Brown to seek tax increases to lift a downcast education system that has taken $17 billion in general fund cuts over the past two years.

"Temporary taxes need to be extended," said Joel Shapiro, superintendent for South Pasadena schools. "Absolutely, we can't do without revenues. We need to educate the voters of California "... that the only way to keep the education system from deteriorating worse is to increase revenues, taxes or fees."

But Brown appeared slightly miffed at the tone Shapiro took toward voters.

"You say we've got to educate them -- in some ways, they've got to educate us," Brown said. "It's not really a we/them. It's society. There's a lot of hostility to government. They look at the city of Bell, they pick up the paper and see firefighters getting a $250,000 pension. There's a lot of skepticism about government in the political process. That's a reality and we have to take the world as we find it and we have to work through it."

James Johnson, a Long Beach councilman, asked Brown how he intends to figure out the contradiction voters have between their desire to fully fund schools and their hostility to taxes.

Brown answered, partly in jest: "That's why we're here -- we're hoping one of you people will come up with it. We didn't gather here just to hear ourselves speak."

One dilemma, he said, was that the state tries to make sense out of competing outlooks from regions that have little in common -- an argument, he said, for shifting many of the state's responsibilities to local governments.

"When we take so many local decisions and put them all at the state Capitol, then we have all these different perceptions working on the problem," he said. "That's why we get a lot of breakdown and gridlock. Because people see the world differently."

One indication of how he'd like to "offload costs" from state to local: There are 45,000 inmates who are incarcerated for 90 days or fewer in state prisons who he said could be housed in county institutions at a lower cost.

Contact Steven Harmon at 916-441-2101.

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China Debuts at Top of International Education Rankings - ABC News

American educators received a wake-up call today when it was revealed that students in Shanghai rank number one globally in reading, math and science, far outpacing their American peers. Despite modest gains in math and science, the U.S. continues to lag behind other developed countries.

A report out today, "Highlights From PISA 2009: Performance of U.S. 15-Year-Old Students in Reading, Mathematics, and Science Literacy in an International Context," shows the U.S. now ranks 25th in math, 17th in science, and 14th in reading out of the 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.

While OECD countries such as Finland, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Switzerland and New Zealand continue to outpace the U.S. in reading, science and math, all eyes are on China. In its first year to be included in the study as a non-OECD education system, Shanghai ranked first in all three categories. Hong Kong came in second in reading and science and third in math.

"The 2009 PISA data demonstrate the rise in the quality of education in Asia -- among the top performers were Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and Korea," said Tony Jackson, Vice President of Education at the Asia Society. "Aligning education goals to economic development, Asian nations have scoured the world for models of effective education systems, and implemented them consistently through deliberate policies and long-term investments. Any definition of a world-class education must include knowledge of Asia and the language and cultural skills to deal with Asia. It's a two-way street: America must now learn from — and with — Asia and the world."

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the findings, "to be brutally honest, show that a host of developed nations are out-educating us."

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Cassidy: Facebook s Mark Zuckerberg could build the education network - San Jose Mercury News

Print   Email   Font ResizeBy Mike Cassidy

Mercury News Columnist

Posted: 10/07/2010 12:16:35 PM PDTUpdated: 10/07/2010 02:28:16 PM PDT
So, I'm sitting in a dimly lit theater in Palo Alto waiting for Superman.

Not the one who wears a red cape. The one who wears a blue hoodie. Silicon Valley boy wonder, Mark Zuckerberg, star of stage, screen, "The Simpsons," Facebook and the universe in general, has invited a few of his 500 million friends to a special movie screening.

No. Not that movie. "The Social Network," Alan Sorkin's fictionalized account of the rise of Facebook and the guy who either invented it or stole it, is not what this night is about. This night is about education and "Waiting for Superman," a documentary that those looking to save our schools hope will do for the education disaster what "An Inconvenient Truth" has done

for the global warming disaster.

And Zuckerberg? He has a chance to become the education CEO, the guy who lubricates the national conversation with star power and tons of cash. He's a billionaire at 26, which gets people's attention -- even in Silicon Valley, where an army of entrepreneurs has made money nearly as fast as they've made progress.

Last month -- on Oprah, no less -- Zuckerberg dropped $100 million on the Newark, N.J., school system. The nationally televised largesse coincided with the run-up to the unflattering portrayal of Zuckerberg in "The Social Network," which opened to rave reviews and box-office supremacy. Naturally, cynics questioned the coincidence. Could it be that the man they call Zuck was trying to counter

the bad vibes from the Facebook blockbuster with a sudden spasm of philanthropy?

A lot to think about in a dimly lit theater as we wait for superman, who does stroll in (sans hoodie) and does exactly the right thing. He picks up a microphone to welcome the educators, community leaders, journalists, friends -- and he makes a joke.

"I'm not really inviting a lot of people to go to the movies right about now," Zuckerberg says, "but I thought this one was pretty important."

The crack filled the theater with laughter and cleared the air over whether Zuckerberg was going to spend much time worrying about those who question his motives. Not that it hasn't been a concern at Facebook HQ.

Larry Yu, Facebook's corporate communications director, told me before the Wednesday screening that the company's public relations staff didn't think announcing Zuckerberg's big gift just as the bothersome biopic was being released was such a hot idea.

"We recommended against the timing," Yu says, "because we thought it would be construed as an obvious ploy."

Which is pretty much how it was construed. But the time was right for New Jersey and two of its prominent politicians -- Gov. Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker -- who teamed up to join forces with Zuckerberg on the education initiative.

And so, it seems Facebook watchers (which is pretty much all of us, right?) are left with a choice: We can see Zuckerberg as a cynical and manipulative billionaire working overtime to spin public opinion. Or we can see him as an incredibly young and fabulously rich man who decided he would start giving away his money much earlier in life than some of those who have gone before him.

Alternatively, you can adopt my take, which is: Who cares? Who cares what motivates a guy to give millions to K-12 education? If you do care, I've got two words for you: Bill Gates. In the late 1990s, when Gates started paring his staggering wealth through philanthropy, he was blistered. The billionaire monopolist was simply buying his way into heaven, critics cried. His generosity was just a way to take the heat off Microsoft, which was being skewered in public opinion and the courts for being anti-competitive.

And maybe it was pure PR. But who cares? Gates just kept giving, and I'd like to hear a coherent argument now that the man doesn't believe in what he's doing, which is helping run the world's largest charitable foundation.

Zuckerberg is young. He's connected. He has a platform to encourage other moguls to follow his lead.

Yu says he doesn't know whether his boss has decided to make K-12 education his signature philanthropic cause. But in the dimly lit theater, Zuckerberg talks about how he wants his $100 million to spur innovations and initiatives that can be replicated across the country.

Here's hope then that Superman's help could be coming to a school district near you.

Contact Mike Cassidy at mcassidy@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5536. Follow him at Twitter.com/mikecassidy.

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