Download a copy of the .pdf here

Download a copy of the.pdf here

Download a .pdf here

As summer school starts what do we find?

• Fewer classes, more competition to get into a class and packed classes

• Less staff

• Few, if any, counselors

• Fewer days that the college is open

• And already most of the fall classes are full

All this means fewer opportunities to get an education.

The community colleges have been cut to the bone through the budget cuts.

And what is being done about this?

In Sacramento the politicians are discussing how to cut even more from CalWORKs, Child Care, the community colleges and the entire educational system of California in the coming year. The legislature is discussing raising community college fees to $40 per unit.

The Same Is Happening To All Sectors Of Education.

At the CSUs and UCs

Fees keep rising – CSU tuition is going up another five percent this fall to $5000. The UCs cost close to $14,000 a year – just to get in the door! Both systems have cut the number of students they are accepting and the number of classes they are offering. This means more UC and CSU students trying to go to the community college for classes and fewer places for community college students to transfer to.

Kindergarten through High School Teachers and staff are being laid off and summer programs have been canceled. Schools are being closed, and music, art and other programs are being eliminated. Children and young people are being crammed into packed classrooms with less and less support.

It isn’t just the schools that are under attack. State workers, transportation workers at BART, MUNI and AC Transit are losing their jobs and benefits. At the same time we are losing vitally needed transportation opportunities. Social and health care services are also being cut including services to the disabled, the homebound and seniors. Day care opportunities for children and medical services are being eliminated or scaled back just when we all need them the most.

The whole working class population of the area is being attacked. Businesses are laying off workers or trying to force them to take cuts in wages and benefits. And it is clear – those who own and run the large corporations in the state are protected by those they have put in office. Both Democrats and Republicans slash education and basic services but won’t tax the corporations and the wealthy in our state - the ninth largest economy in the world.

We cannot accept this. We have to fight back. Some of us began this fight last year culminating in the massive day of protest on March 4th all across the state. Many of us in the community colleges organized at our schools and also participated in the planning and the rally in San Francisco that brought over 12,000 students, teachers, workers and parents to the Civic Center Plaza. But one day of protest is obviously not enough. If you are fed up and ready to do something about these cutbacks – join us.

DOWNLOAD a pdf of this flyer here

This is the latest article on the state of the California budget. The typical cycle of decreasing revenue from the rich and corporations and making up for it in cuts continues on. Once again, they expect us to pay for their crisis.

The state budget crisis has been quiet for the past few months but will return to center stage this week as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger prepares to belt out some bad news.

The governor is scheduled to release an updated budget plan Friday that will probably include even deeper cuts than those he proposed in January, when he called for reductions in health and human services, prisons, education and state worker pay, among other areas.

Former Secretary of Education under George H.W. Bush, Diane Ravitch, was interviewed on this morning's episode of Forum on KQED radio. Ravitch is a conservative republican who used to be in support of legislation that pushed for standardized testing, and privatizing public education, but over the years, she saw what a dismal failure these policies were and began to speak out against them. In this interview she explains that the current educational agenda of the Obama administration continues where the previous Bush administration left off. She calls it the "dismantling of public education," an agenda which pushes to close public schools, fire teachers, regiment curriculum, and support charter (for profit) schools. This provides some of the back story to what is happening all across the country as schools cut education funds and close down schools and lay off teachers. These policies only lead towards the complete elimination of public education as we know it.

Click here to listen to the radio interview

An article about San Juan Capistrano School District threatens to hire security gaurds to break a teacher's strike against layoffs and budget cuts.

Click here