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California has more money than projected after admin miscalculated state budget

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Re: California has more money than projected after admin miscalculated state budget

#61

Post by bayarearefugee »

gruez wrote: post #57
aaomidi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we expect schooling to get…cheaper? The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing.

>The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing. Only if you assume if per-teacher productivity can't increase.

> Only if you assume if per-teacher productivity can't increase.

It can't.

The only axis upon which teacher "productivity" could increase is by increasing the size of their classes.

Every study and every practical example of doing that ever done shows that it negatively impacts student outcomes.

Not because the teacher is failing to be whatever it is you imagine "more productive" to be but because there is a minimum amount of attention needed per student for them to not fall through the cracks and one person's attention is not scalable.

Re: California has more money than projected after admin miscalculated state budget

#62

Post by dlcarrier »

wahern wrote: post #40
dlcarrier wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The errors were all within the CalPERS pension fund. The pensions are guaranteed by the state, so the fund is notorious for a complete lack of fiduciary duty, and these types of errors track with the general quality of their operation.

Alternatively, since we're spit balling, the administrators and/or accounting staff decided to strategically error on the side of a shortfall because its politically impossible to get the state to fully fund the pension obligations or to stop effectively raiding it.

That's what California's Parks department did, 15 years ago: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/State-parks-director-res...

Re: California has more money than projected after admin miscalculated state budget

#63

Post by verteu »

xp84 wrote: post #35
mlmonkey wrote: post #31

> California's legislative leaders have known for months but did not make the issue public. Why would they give up a chance to make more money from the people? The government never misses an opportunity to pad its coffers. Reminds me of the CA State Parks department, which squirreled away millions of dollars and then was crying about lack of funding and hence wanted to shut down some parks.

Fun fact: I recently vacationed in Hawaii and couldn’t help but notice, despite groceries costing about 2x, gas there is a dollar cheaper than at home in California. California just can’t get enough tax money.

The best comparison is probably "overall tax burden": https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/tax-burden-by-state...

When you include all taxes (eg property tax), there's surprisingly little variation between states: For example, TX is 6th-lowest at 8.6% of income, while CA is 46th-lowest at 13.5% of income. Hawaii is 48th-lowest at 14.1%

Re: California has more money than projected after admin miscalculated state budget

#64

Post by sgc »

gruez wrote: post #57
aaomidi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we expect schooling to get…cheaper? The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing.

>The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing. Only if you assume if per-teacher productivity can't increase.

Sure, let's have 100 child classes which are hell on earth for everybody involved, starting with the little kids who will literally be scarred for life from it.

Teacher costs should be going up as much as we can afford, to keep reducing class sizes as a fundamental part of quality education.

I agree that admin is ripe for efficiency gains. A local school district cut dozens of teaching roles, not even one person from their extremely bloated central administration. It's also out of touch with the schools with no campus visits, and serves mainly as a hindrance to any sort of actual work going on inside the individual schools. It's a horrible caricature of bureaucracy.

Re: California has more money than projected after admin miscalculated state budget

#65

Post by MLR »

reassess_blind wrote: post #50
mistrial9 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in California there are not more students.. all tiers of schools show falling enrollments, year after year. Except community colleges, where they have discovered that more than 15% of all students are ghost enrolled. -- California K-12 public school enrollment fell by 74,961 students (a 1.3% decline) for the 2025-26 school year, marking the largest drop since the pandemic. This loss was significantly higher than the…

That's surprising. Surely there are still more than there were 30 years ago?

From glancing at the numbers it looks pretty similar, but there's been a huge drop in births in California in the last 10-20 years so it's probably the last few years where that will be true.

Peak birth year was 1990 after booming through the 80s, births started falling off a cliff after 2008 and last year there were about the same number of births as in 1980 despite the population increasing by 80%.

Re: California has more money than projected after admin miscalculated state budget

#66

Post by thelock85 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #48
aaomidi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we expect schooling to get…cheaper? The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing.

> vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers My 1,500-student public California high school currently lists 7 administration-team members (principal, executive assistant, three assistant principals, school-facilities manager and food-services manager) and 11 administrative-support members (school data-processing specialist, print-center technician, senior-clerical assistant, separate registrar and attendance roles,…

It’s because there are tons of laws and regulations regarding minors in school, and administration tends to be homegrown (initial expertise in teaching) rather than explicitly developed to navigate the social, political and legal landscape. I’d wager that more than half of those positions are “best practice” staffing decisions in response to this landscape. A handful might also be due to expressed needs and wants of parents. Likely wasteful overall, but students, teachers and families would likely feel the impact and not be satisfied if any positions were axed.

Re: California has more money than projected after admin miscalculated state budget

#67

Post by toast0 »

gruez wrote: post #57
aaomidi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we expect schooling to get…cheaper? The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing.

>The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing. Only if you assume if per-teacher productivity can't increase.

You could increase per teacher productivity by running 12 months of school per year, but you would increase costs; and in some parts of California, you would need to rebuild schools with air conditioning to hold classes effectively in the summer.

Covid showed distance learning doesn't work for most kids. So you can't eliminate real estate costs or hire educators in low cost areas. Computerized education doesn't seem to work, either.

Re: California has more money than projected after admin miscalculated state budget

#68

Post by aiiane »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54
aiiane wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of those roles specifically would you say are fluff?

> Which of those roles specifically would you say are fluff? Food-services manager (it's all oursourced to Aramark), data-processing specialist, print-center technician, senior clerical assistant, one of registrar or attendance, two of site maintenance, one of the network specialists (probably both–one across the district is plenty), and probably at least one of the counselors and the separate social science & athlet…

Someone still has to coordinate with Aramark.

Data-processing specialist and print-center technician both sound like fancy names for secretarial roles.

You're honestly saying schools need fewer counselors in what has been generally regarded as the worst generation for child mental health in years?

Re: California has more money than projected after admin miscalculated state budget

#69

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bayarearefugee wrote: post #61
gruez wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing. Only if you assume if per-teacher productivity can't increase.

> Only if you assume if per-teacher productivity can't increase. It can't. The only axis upon which teacher "productivity" could increase is by increasing the size of their classes. Every study and every practical example of doing that ever done shows that it negatively impacts student outcomes. Not because the teacher is failing to be whatever it is you imagine "more productive" to be but because there is a minimum…

> only axis upon which teacher "productivity" could increase is by increasing the size of their classes

And hours in class. Or productivity of time in class. I'm not saying the former is desirable or latter feasible. But the education "production function" has three inputs.

Re: California has more money than projected after admin miscalculated state budget

#70

Post by gruez »

toast0 wrote: post #67
gruez wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing. Only if you assume if per-teacher productivity can't increase.

You could increase per teacher productivity by running 12 months of school per year, but you would increase costs; and in some parts of California, you would need to rebuild schools with air conditioning to hold classes effectively in the summer. Covid showed distance learning doesn't work for most kids. So you can't eliminate real estate costs or hire educators in low cost areas. Computerized education doesn't seem…

>You could increase per teacher productivity by running 12 months of school per year

Productivity is output divided by some input, either labor or money. Working for longer isn't going to magically increase productivity.

>Covid showed distance learning doesn't work for most kids. So you can't eliminate real estate costs or hire educators in low cost areas. Computerized education doesn't seem to work, either.

Right, I don't have a specific solution for increasing teacher productivity, but it's not obvious that it's a law of economics that it can't increase. People thought lawyers and doctors couldn't be automated away, then came chatgpt.

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