Statement on the May budget revise from CSBA President Dr. Debra Schade

Statement on the May budget revise from CSBA President Dr. Debra Schade<_sc3a_dot _xmlns3a_sc="http://www.sitecore.net/sc">

Sacramento, CA (May 14, 2026) - Gov. Gavin Newsom's May Budget Revise contains welcome provisions that will benefit public schools, including a 4.31 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) and a $2.4 billion ongoing increase for special education. Unfortunately, the Governor's May Revise masks the underfunding of the Proposition 98 school funding guarantee and the prolific use of one-time money to inflate funding levels in the short term without providing the stability and predictability schools need to plan effectively for student support.

The administration's generosity in some areas is undercut by its inclusion of funding for one-time projects and one-size-fits-all mandates instead of investing those resources in base funding that allows school districts and county offices of education to allocate the money in ways that best meet the needs of local students. This approach exacerbates the fact that schools have less money to allocate toward skyrocketing costs as well as staffing and services that provide the most benefit for their students.

Highlighted by the decision to withhold $3.9 billion in Prop 98 funding owed to public schools - estimated at $635 per student - under Prop 98, the Governor extends a troubling tendency to manipulate Prop 98 in a manner that skirts the will of the voters and weakens the intent of its constitutional and statutory provisions. By manipulating some of the Prop 98 funding due for TK-14 schools for the third year in a row, the administration is viewing Prop 98 as a discretionary pot of money that can be used to satisfy other parts of the state budget without following the readily available, and constitutionally embedded process within Prop 98 to temporarily reduce the minimum guarantee. This process ensures Prop 98 funding is appropriately accounted for and, when necessary, repaid to schools in alignment with the structure outlined in Prop 98.

The administration must abandon its decision to sidestep the requirements of voter-approved Prop 98 and replace its ad hoc system of education governance with one based on an operations and support plan with clear goals, benchmarks, evaluation and reporting requirements indicating how the state will better support - not dictate to - local educational agencies.