Not surprisingly, this impact is felt disproportionately by poor and minority students.

Plainly put: with the K8 model we spend significantly more and give our students significantly less.

There was no planning, and funding and support have been entirely inadequate. K8s that are “working” are the exception, based on conversations I’ve had with teachers, administrators and families across the district.

The Oregon Center for Public Policy is doing good analysis on state budget issues. Sign up for their updates at http://www.ocpp.org.

Continuing to accept Salem’s budget scraps and trying to make do will only fuel funding opponents who think schools can do with less. The only solution is to cut the school year. DO NOT make cuts to any programs! Only the drastic solution of cutting the school year will demonstrate to the public that schools can not take any more cuts. We need stable funding and we need it now! Cutting the school year is the ONLY cut that will be immediately visible to those Oregonians who do not currently have students in public schools (or work in public schools.) The Legislature and voters of the state of Oregon need to take bold and courageous steps now to revamp the entire way schools are funded and to make a serious commitment to adequate funding for all levels of education. The School Board needs to take dramatic action now to call attention to the state of school funding in Oregon.

I’m not all that hopeful that it will happen, but this is the last best hope. If this meltdown doesn’t convince us to change our ways, nothing will.

That said, I think we all need to be very actively communicating with our legislators to ensure that they start thinking big about reforms. Thus far, the suggestions I’ve heard from various groups all strike me as too little and too late. We’re not going to stop this perennial crisis mode with nickels and dimes. We need fundamental change and a thorough top to bottom redesign. A beer tax would be reasonable, but it’s chicken feed. We need a corporate tax that will ensure real cost sharing of essential services. We need to get rid of the ridiculous kicker. (There’s a reason why no other state in the union has one.) We need to either reverse Measure 5 or create an educational financing system that accounts for it and ensures adequate funding. We need equal taxation of income, regardless of whether it’s from work or investments. We need better enforcement of tax laws. And tax credits should be given only when there is a clear and demonstrable public benefit.

What I’m hearing is proposals for “sensible” reform, which appears to mean just chipping away at the edges, the “low hanging fruit.” That’s not nearly good enough.

The Dems have the majority they need to enact tax laws, but I see no evidence of the political will that it will require either from the legislature or the Governor. So we have to make them do it anyway. At minimum, I would like to see a task force appointed to design a complete overhaul.

Our kids deserve nothing less.