Columns 2010

November 2, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - Q. My children go to school in the district in which I live, and it is great. I teach in a different district and we were told we are moving close to becoming a Program Improvement district. Do you think your readers need to hear about how many districts and schools are now getting into this category?

October 28, 2010, Brian Calle, The Orange County Register - Voters in the Capistrano Unified School District general election have a clear choice between the union slate, which is attempting through a two-front strategy to retake the board majority, or current trustees ... As I see it, current school board incumbents have been effective in their fiduciary duties and in keeping the commitment to the issues they campaigned on: advocating for charter schools, school choice and no parcel taxes. They have been tough in their dealings with the unions and, from my viewpoint, acted decisively to address budget gaps. The decision for voters in Capo Unified is whether or not they want their union to have more influence over the board there...

October 18, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - Oh, some good old Aretha Franklin ... R.E.S.P.E.C.T. I am a producer for PBS Television, so when we received an invitation to see a screening of "Waiting For Superman," my husband and I jumped on it! We have an 11-year-old in school and we really wanted to see what this Superman business was all about. After the screening, we both had opposite views on the issue. I was shocked! I thought for sure we would spend our drive home bashing the school system together and enjoying every bit of it, since the documentary exposed the flaws...

October 18, 2010, Yvette Cabrerra, The Orange County Register - In California, as we plod through this not-so-great recession, there are two kinds of education-related cost cuts in play – the sexy kind and the not-so-sexy kind. Any reduction in spending that might crank up the number of kids in a third-grade classroom, for example, is easy for parents and other taxpayers to understand. Same for cuts that wipe out arts classes or PE or, the latest craze, several school days a year. All those cuts, popular or not, attract attention and debate. In short, they're sexy. But farther down on the radar is another kind of cost cutting – the one that wipes out the often stereotyped resource known as the school librarian...

October 18, 2010, Robert Enlow, The Orange County Register - More than three months and thousands of IOUs later, California lawmakers finally came to an $87.5 billion budget deal that included what they are calling bold steps toward public-employee pension reform. Instead, lawmakers just kicked the can – a $326.6 billion retiree obligation – down the road and onto future taxpayers...

October 14, 2010, Teryl Zarnow, The Orange County Register - In America, we focus on staying in drive. Moving forward feels like it brings us closer to progress and greater prosperity. But the current economy is difficult precisely because it feels like we're doing the opposite of what we want. These days, few are getting ahead, many are falling behind, and the best case, often, is to be stuck in neutral. Union contracts graphically illustrate the point. Gone are new deals that call for increases in workers' salaries and benefits. The object today is to hold ground or mitigate the loss. Teachers contracts offer an example...

October 12, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - I have some questions for you. ... Do you understand that tenure is something unique to your profession and not practiced in private industry? Do you understand that in private industry, companies may choose to eliminate more experienced (and higher paid) employees just to stay in business? If you understand even some of this, then why should teaches be considered special and be protected by "tenure" just because they have seniority? I think a better policy for education is to treat it more like private industry and get rid of any employees – regardless of "tenure" – that are not doing their job well. This policy would make all teachers accountable...

October 2010, Ken Lopez Maddox, Trabuco Canyon News - Student achievement in Capistrano Unified School District has soared to its highest levels. In fact, the State Superintendent of Public Education just announced CUSD was the State’s highest achieving large school district according to the state accountability system ... CUSD’s ranking is important because it provides parents, taxpayers and the state with objective proof our school district is providing a first-rate, excellent education to our 50,000 students. This is something we can all be proud of. CUSD’s ranking also provides voters with confirmation their seven elected Reform Trustees have kept their promises and successfully brought positive change and reform to CUSD...

September 15, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - My daughter is teaching fourth grade this year after 10 years of kindergarten and first grade. It is a difficult transition. This is a high-achieving school with three parents in the class at all times. I thought the book you mentioned, "Wooden," would be an inspiration for her. I want to confirm the title – "Wooden – A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and OFF the Court" – since he has written so much...

September 15, 2010, Elizabeth Esther, The Orange County Register - The nasty e-mail stunned me. Several parents, myself included, were accused of complaining about our kids’ teacher and reprimanded for not volunteering in the classroom. The assumptions were only partially true — yes, I had been unable to volunteer that year due to newborn twins — but it was just plain false that I had ever complained about my daughter’s grades. Worst of all, the e-mail had been sent to every parent on the classroom e-mail list. I was embarrassed and confused. Should I respond? And if so, how?…

August 31, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - After extensive study of the vaccines issues, my wife and I do not want our baby to have vaccines. But there is an issue with the school system's mandatory vaccines policy before attending school. From my reading, we have the legal right to claim the vaccines would be against our "beliefs." Are you aware of what school districts allow students to enroll/attend without having vaccines and the success/failure of the 'beliefs' option?...

August 24, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - In regard to that the LA Times using the value-added model model, they cannot evaluate us "expendable" kindergarten or first-grade teachers, now can they? It is true that this model will not measure the value that kindergarten or first-grade teachers add. In fact, if a school has a highly effective kindergarten and first grade staff, that can have a negative impact on the school's VAM score. The students might be prepared to score at or above average in second grade and their beginning scores may be too high. The model tries to predict how high a student will continue to score each year…

August 2010, Larry Christensen, Trabuco Canyon News - At first glance one might wonder if the reform Board of Trustees at Capistrano Unified School District (CUSD) has affected any change at the troubled district. The original “ABC” slate comprised of Addonizio, Bryson and Christensen were handily elected four years ago come November. One year later a successful recall installed Palazzo and Maddox and in the subsequent year Winston and Brick were elected to posts. Within a two-year span all seven long-termed trustees under the regime of the now indicted superintendent James Fleming had been removed. Two decades of misappropriation of funding, nepotism, favoritism, creation of “enemy lists” and extravagant deficit spending was too much for the public to bear...

July 21, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register Q. I don't think teachers are "spoiled" by the smaller class size at all. The number of children who need more intensive assistance or attention is much higher than it used to be, yet there are far more standards and benchmark testing that our teachers need to prepare students for than in decades past. This also necessitates more time spent on individual testing, which means less time for general classroom teaching. Most people aren't aware of this. Top this off with the on-going layoffs of many of the support staff, custodians (who just by their presence add to the security and safety of a campus by moving around and monitoring the campus), library personnel, etc. – teachers will have to do more to compensate for the loss of this assistance…

July 20, 2010, Ben Boychuk, The Orange County Register - The National Education Association boasts a membership of more than 3 million teachers and is one of the most powerful interest groups within the Democratic Party. But, despite its size and influence, the nation's largest teachers union has positioned itself well outside America's political mainstream. The NEA is so far out, the New York Times reported that union officials didn't invite President Barack Obama or U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to speak at the union's annual convention in New Orleans this year out of concern the 9,000 delegates might heckle them off the stage…

July 16, 2010, Nicholas Wishek, The Orange County Register - The upcoming election will make or break America. I am now one of over 28 million Americans who are retired. For some, ex-congressmen, for instance, their financial future is as secure. For most of the rest of us who aren't in the same fiscal neighborhood as Warren Buffett, the economic future is anything but secure. This is especially true for the 11 million Americans on Social Security. Everyone, retirees and future retirees, should be deathly concerned about what the future holds for us economically...

July 13, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - Q. Recently, I was going through a box of old pictures and came across a picture taken in 1970 of my first-grade class. It brought back fond memories of a sweet, loving teacher I still remember! Today, I read your column about the first grade teacher who is nervous about teaching next year because her class size will increase to 33 students. So, I went back to the photo and counted the students in my class. There were 32 of us. I must confess, I think teachers today are spoiled by the small class sizes and, honestly, I don't think our children are doing better than we did 40 years ago. I hope this teacher looks within herself and considers where her passion is and, if it is teaching, then I hope she has the same impact on her 33 students that my first grade teacher had on me…

June 29, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - Q. I did not let my fifth-grade son attend the sexual education seminar at his school because, frankly, I did not want the school to teach my son about these things. All of the other kids went, however, and that is all they talked about for the rest of the year at lunchtime. I should have let him go, I guess, because he is hearing these other kids' interpretation of things that are just way beyond their level and the things these kids come up with is comical! Will my school have this program again every year, or was it a one-time deal? Can I get the material they talked about to see if I can get into this with my son, even though I really don't want to?

June 18, 2010, Mike Stryer, Daily News - WHY would so many LAUSD teachers - who theoretically stood to gain so much from the proposed Measure E parcel tax - celebrate its decisive defeat last week? For the simple reason that many teachers, together with large numbers of voters, no longer will tolerate the continued financial mismanagement by Los Angeles Unified School District. Voters have clearly communicated that LAUSD should not ask for more money until it implements meaningful financial reform...

June 16, 2010, Evelyn B. Stacey (Pacific Research Institute) Flash Report - Last week, after the governor signed the state’s pro-charter-school application for Federal Race to the Top funding, the Assembly passed a bill that would hamper charter school growth. AB 1950 by Assembly Education Chair Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica) adds regulations that will hinder the innovative qualities that have made charter schools successful and popular among parents … As of last year, more than 20,000 California students are on charter school waiting lists and the demand for good charter schools is growing. The Obama administration has emphasized the importance of innovation in charter schools, encouraging states to remove obstacles impeding their success. Some California legislators seem intent on quashing charter school achievement and further denying families any choice in their child’s education. This will not help California race to the top in student achievement. AB 1950 awaits a hearing in the Senate this month...

June 16, 2010, K. Lloyd Billingsley, Pacific Research Institute - From Susanville to San Diego, California cities are struggling financially but now face more bad news. Assembly Bill 155, by Tony Mendoza, Artesia Democrat, would prevent California cities from filing for federal bankruptcy protection. The union-backed bill would allow a union-friendly state agency, the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission, to deny any municipal bankruptcy filing and keep intact all labor contracts. This measure invites a look at the power of government employee unions…

June 15, 2010, Chip Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle - Two years after Vallejo made history as the first city in the Golden State to file for bankruptcy, voters have grasped the city's dire financial situation even if some members of local government haven't. Residents appeared to have approved Measure A by a slim margin last week. The vote count is close and provisional ballots are still being counted, so results haven't been made official. The ballot measure would remove binding arbitration from the City Charter, effectively ending the public employee unions' grip on labor contract negotiation….

June 11, 2010, George Will, The Orange County Register - Under the current imperfect administration of the universe, most new ideas are false, so most ideas for improvements make matters worse. Given California's parlous condition, making matters worse there requires ingenuity, but voters managed to do so Tuesday. Actually, 8.9 percent of eligible voters did. By a margin of 54.2 percent to 45.8 percent, they passed Proposition 14, the Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act. Proponents outspent opponents 20-1. Of the approximately $4.6 million spent promoting the measure, $2 million came from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's political committee. He seems to consider this reform his defining achievement, which, in a sense, it is. The percentage of Californians who approve of Schwarzenegger is a number beginning with 2. But now California has adopted a candidate selection process that is intended to nominate candidates like him...

June 10, 2010, Peter Scheer, First Amendment Coalition Public unions’ traditional strength–the ability to finance their members’ rising pay and benefits through tax increases–has become a liability. Although private sector unions always have had to worry that consumers will resist rising prices for their goods, public sector unions have benefited from the fact that taxpayers can’t choose–they are, in effect, “captive consumers.” At some point, however, voters turn resentful as they sense that: (1) they are underwriting, through their taxes, a level of salary and benefits for government employment that is better than what they and their families have; and (2) government services, from schools to the DMV, are not good enough—not for the citizen individually nor the public generally—to justify the high and escalating cost. We are at that point…

June 8, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - Q. I just received parenting "advice," if you want to call it that, from a person that does not have children of her own. My son's fourth-grade teacher asked me if I really wanted her to tell me what she really thinks of my parenting. I took the challenge and this old, childless woman told me I have no idea what I am doing. Tell me, teacher, is this right? I am shaking still and this happened three days ago. I don't even want to send my child to finish the year with this person. How dare she tell me how to parent? She never even became a parent herself.

June 7, 2010, Jon Coupal, The Orange County Register - Jon Coupal, The Orange County Register Like the proverbial wolf that continues to lick the knife blade because it enjoys the taste of its own blood, the Democrats running the Legislature are back with another huge tax increase.. At a time when the state's economy and taxpayers are still staggering under the burden of last year's $12.6 billion tax increase, Democrats are pushing a plan to raise taxes by yet another $5 billion and to borrow an additional $8.7 billion. Among the proposals are extensions of last year's increases in sales, income and car taxes that were due to expire after two years. This goes to prove the adage that there is nothing so permanent as the temporary…

June 7, 2010, Dan Walters, The Orange County Register - It's a week before the June 15 constitutional deadline for enacting a California state budget, an appropriate moment to consider the status of this year's version of the annual fiscal drama. And that is? Up the proverbial creek without the proverbial paddle. In the weeks since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled his revised 2010-11 budget, there's been absolutely no progress on closing the deficit that approaches $20 billion. In fact, the situation may have grown worse because the extra federal funds that the governor and the Legislature have counted on are evaporating…

June 3, 2010, Ben Boychuk, The Orange County Register - Bill would change the union-required 'last hired, first fired' system. SB955 would move California toward a more rational layoff policy and set the foundation for a performance-based evaluation system. With several more difficult state budget years likely, principals and superintendents need concrete performance criteria for deciding who gets a pink slip. Teachers should be paid for performance. A merit-pay system that rewards the best while encouraging the worst to find another line of work is a necessary reform. The current system is about preserving union jobs, not giving kids the best possible education.

June 1, 2010, Dan Walters, The Orange County Register - To appease unions looking to make it tougher for cities to go bankrupt, the bill was laden with amendments that could still leave cities exposed to creditors ... So far, just one California city, Vallejo, has declared bankruptcy, but nearby Antioch is considering it. If the recession persists and revenues continue to stagnate, others may follow. That's why municipal employee unions are making a big-time push for legislation that would make bankruptcy more difficult. The unions' underlying motives are crystal clear. They fear a bankruptcy judge might rule that a city's labor contracts, or even pension obligations, could be abrogated. They want to make municipal bankruptcy more difficult to discourage troubled local governments from resorting to it…

June 1, 2010, Nick Bernardino, The Orange County Register - It's campaign season again and that means the anti-union political attacks are once again at their peak. In a desperate search for votes, public employees have become the target of distorted political attacks. There's a serious flaw with this approach – it assumes voters don't know the truth and don't want to. These misleading attacks on unions intentionally disregard the fact that Orange County's public employee unions, including the Orange County Employees Association (OCEA), have initiated and achieved multiple initiatives to reform pensions and other benefits that help save local governments millions in costs now and in the future. Yet, instead of acknowledging and praising these efforts, political opportunists stretch credibility by ignoring facts and banking on voters to do the same…

June 1, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - I do not think I complain about my salary. I am not asking for more nor am I calling for raises. I do grow tired of people saying we are overpaid, which is not the case, and I think the cuts coming to our salaries are significant. The last part of your letter really made me think. I received news today that I have a job next year, where I thought I was laid off after receiving my final notice. It is a strange year when this all happens. I am feeling relieved to have my job back and yet your last sentence about all of those people who would love to replace me really hit home. I know how true that is, as I was just one of those people a few hours ago worried about what I would do for a job next year.

June 2010, Larry Christensen, The Trabuco Canyon News - The cuts were neither temporary nor permanent but to be tied to the State’s ability to reinstate funding back to schools at historic levels. CUEA conceded the fact that at least a l0% cut was required, however they touted that since no specific date was given as to when teacher’s pay would be reinstated then the cuts were permanent. Strike posturing began almost immediately and the mantra associated with strike chants built upon the word “permanent”, even though the word was never part of the imposed language. Though pre-strike rhetoric against the board was disseminated on a daily basis the board honored the precondition to remain quiet about their reasons or viewpoints in order not to violate fair practice laws by negotiating in public. CUSD offered a date to meet with CUEA to resolve the remaining issues and to set language for a new contract in order to avoid a strike. CUEA set that very same day to strike…

May 28, 2010, Jon Coupal, The Orange County Register - A free-for-all primary system would result in higher taxes. Promoters of Proposition 14 on the June ballot say they want an "open" primary. "Open" makes it sound so inclusive, so liberating, so egalitarian – what could possibly be wrong with that? If you pay taxes in California, the answer is: plenty! Prop. 14 is the result of collusion between an ambitious politician, newly appointed Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, and entrenched Sacramento spending interests. A year ago, then-Sen. Maldonado, a Republican, sold his vote for the most massive tax increase in the history of all 50 states, in return for an agreement to place a measure on the ballot that would make it easier for him to run for statewide office. That measure is Proposition 14…

May 26, 2010, Louis Pugliese, Daily News - IN June, once again taxpayers will be asked to ante-up in a parcel tax for the financially and academically bankrupt LAUSD - the money-sucking bureaucratic nightmare that should have disintegrated long ago and gotten out of the business of running schools. It's high time that Los Angeles Unified School District comes clean on the real costs to run a school - without the added cost of the district administration as the toll collector. Taxpayers, parents and teachers have the right to know what operating a school would take without the district's bumbling bureaucracy, fees, consultants, waste and "encroachments." Of course, they'll never do that. So maybe it's best we just do it ourselves...

May 26, 2010, Dan Walters, The Orange County Register - The California Legislature's Democratic leaders, after months of hoping against hope that the state budget deficit would magically disappear, have finally returned to their ideological roots, proposing new taxes and new borrowing to avoid deep spending cuts. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's no-new-taxes budget would eliminate welfare grants, hit K-12 education and slash deeply into the remainder of the social services and health safety net for millions of poor Californians – anathema to the Legislature's liberals. However, the nearly $5 billion in temporary new taxes proposed by Democratic senators and the more than $9 billion in one-time borrowing favored by Democratic Assembly members, absent some economic miracle, would, as Schwarzenegger often says, merely "kick the can down the road."

May 26, 2010, Christian Cushing-Murray, The Orange County Register - Public schools are failing. Say it a few times; it rolls off the tongue easily enough. In fact, it's been said often enough that whatever bitterness may have once flavored it has faded, like the wads of gum stuck on the undersides my students' desks. The condemnation comes easy, but is it true? I teach English at Century High School in Santa Ana, one of several Orange County schools newly labeled "persistently low-achieving" by the state Department of Education. Brought on in part by relatively stagnant language-arts test scores, I suppose I'm something of an expert on the notion of failing public schools. What, then, is the truth?

May 25, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - Q. Can you do me a favor and put the cuts coming to our salary in dollars and cents for your readers so quick to criticize us? Do they know how much is being taken out of our pay this coming month? These furlough days are a huge hit to us and yet I keep hearing people say we need to do our share. How many of them would like to take this huge chunk out of their pay?

May 25, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - Q. If I hear one more time about how teachers are paid less than the private sector, I'm going to scream. What do you think a person with a four-year degree and no experience should earn? Also, take into consideration that they work less than 200 days a year and have a lifetime of pension income and no or very little health insurance costs that also cover their dependents. I realize that the teachers unions have to keep this myth alive to remain viable. Please just stop the whining! I have to go now, I am 62 years old and got to get back to work ... I don't have a pension...

May 25, 2010, Dan Walters, The Sacramento Bee - California's perpetual public debate over the sad condition of its K-12 schools entered a new and potentially climactic phase last week when a coalition of education groups filed a lawsuit alleging that the entire 6 million-student system is unconstitutional. The suit, filed in Alameda County, declares that the state "has failed its constitutional obligation to support its public schools in a way that ensures that all students are provided an opportunity to meet the state's academic goals."

May 24, 2010, Karl Manheim, John S. Caragozian and Don Warner, The Los Angeles Times - We share the emerging consensus that California is broken. State government is failing its citizens in education, infrastructure, parks and elsewhere. These failures, in turn, cause counties, cities and school districts to slash their own services. Given the Legislature's chronic inability to deal realistically with the state budget, these failures may worsen. The governor's recent May revise, pilloried in the May 18 Times' editorial, "Schwarzenegger's 'ugly' budget," is another indicator that the state's problems are escalating...

May 19, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - I am responding to your writer who "wonders how they [those who criticize teachers] would do spending one week in the classroom." I taught for nine years then moved to the private sector, where I worked for the next 28 years. I mean no disrespect when I state that teaching is far easier. I also wonder: Do educators really understand how their benefits compare to the private sector? We could start with tenure and continue with health benefits, vacation and sick pay, and contracted work days. Perhaps you should dedicate a column to this subject…

May 19, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - It really stuck out that the federal government only funds special education 19 percent when they should fund it at least 40 percent. Seems to me that they should fund it 100 percent and then we would be out of the woods, so to speak. Is this an Obama administration cut from funding it down to 19 percent from 40 percent?

May 14, 2010, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, U.S. News & World Report - The American public feels it is drowning in red ink. It is dismayed and even outraged at the burgeoning national deficits, unbalanced state and local budgets, and accounting that often masks the extent of indebtedness. There is a mounting sense that taxpayers are being taken for an expensive ride by public sector unions. The extraordinary benefits the unions have secured for their members are going to be harder and harder to pay...

May 11, 2010, Dan Walters, The Orange County Register - Altering Proposition 13, which many public employee unions and other liberal groups support, would require a ballot measure that it's generally believed would be impossible to pass. But for decades, those groups have dreamed of altering the rules governing "change in ownership" so that taxes on commercial property would increase. In theory, it could be done with a vote of the Legislature and a governor's signature, but numerous attempts have failed.

May 11, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - Q. Why did your district settle so quickly after the Capistrano Unified strike? Did it turn out that they helped you guys in the end, doing the dirty work for you guys? A. There is still a lot of animosity surrounding the events that led to the strike in that district. My district, Saddleback Valley Unified School District, handled things differently than Capo...

May 11, 2010, Column: Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register Q. I am so sick of the sense of entitlement of you tax grabbers, also known as teachers. I pay your salary and you all need to do your job and stay quiet. A. I honestly do not understand why someone would write this to me. Your perception of teachers is horrible, but your willingness to insult everyone in the teaching profession is unsettling…

May 11, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register Q. I am so sick of the sense of entitlement of you tax grabbers, also known as teachers. I pay your salary and you all need to do your job and stay quiet. A. I honestly do not understand why someone would write this to me. Your perception of teachers is horrible, but your willingness to insult everyone in the teaching profession is unsettling…

May 9, 2010, Steven Greenhut, North County Times - California's Assembly Democrats want you to be part of the state's budget solution, which is how they are touting a series of live budget forums across the state ... the state's Democrats want you to show up to their town hall and tell them how important it is to pass an initiative stripping away the two-thirds budget vote requirement, so that they will have an easier time passing budgets with their tax-and-spend philosophy firmly in place. This ultimately will lead to the removal of the two-thirds vote requirement for tax increases. Democrats in California believe that the state's problems stem entirely from a lack of revenue and tax rates that they always find to be too low. I can't imagine anything that would be more destructive to California than giving the majority party unchecked power to raise taxes...

May 9, 2010, Fred Barnes, WashingtomExaminer.com - John Edwards was right. There are two Americas, just not his two (the rich and powerful versus everyone else). The real divide today is, on one side, the 20 million people who work for state and local governments and the additional 3 million who've retired with fat pensions. On the other, the rest of us, about 280 million Americans. In short, there's a gulf between the bureaucrats and the people…

May 7, 2010, Updated May 11, 2010, Steven Greenhut, The Orange County Register - "Most residents probably don't think too much about the Board of Supervisors, but there is one question that all voters should ponder before Election Day: "Which candidate has the stomach to stand up to the county's politically powerful public employee unions?" If a supervisor can't say "no" to these groups, then the county's finances and public services will suffer, especially now, when the economy is lean, and pension debts are growing … This is the showdown we needed and that I had in mind when I gave my speech," OC Republican Party Chairman Scott Baugh told me. "Voters will be given clear choices between those who want to reform a severely broken system and the union candidate who wants to perpetuate the status quo." Baugh is referring to his speech last year calling on Republican candidates – even in officially nonpartisan races, such as supervisor – to eschew union money...

May 5, 2010, Dan Walters, The Ornge County Register - As the fiscal travails of California's state and local governments grow more acute, hitherto sacrosanct – or ignored – governmental sectors have found themselves under intensifying scrutiny...Critical scrutiny of pensions, redevelopment, tax loopholes, "entitlements," bloated prison overhead and other sacred cows is long overdue. We no longer can commit billions of public dollars with scant justification while basic services wither. It's time to get real.

May 4, 2010, Dan Walters, The Orange County Register - The gerrymander rendered the November elections irrelevant by designating the party ownership of all 120 legislative districts, thus making primary elections in Democratic districts the only ones that really matter. Typically, business would support a relatively moderate Democratic candidate in the primary while the Big 4 would back a more liberal Democrat. The game would change again if Proposition 14, creating a "top two" primary election system, is approved by voters in June. The top two vote getters in the primary would face each other in the November election, regardless of party. That means, in theory, two Democrats or two Republicans could wind up in a November runoff…

May 4, 2010, Debra Saunders, The Orange County Register - California desperately needs lawmakers who can work together. Enter Proposition 14: This measure on the June 8 ballot would end the party primary system by putting the two candidates who garner the most votes on the general election ballot. The measure would apply to all state and federal races except the presidency. Its goal is to elect more moderate lawmakers from both parties. But can it deliver? To tell the truth, it's a roll of the dice…

April 27, 2010, Carol Varavanich, The Orange County Register - Q. I was taken aback by the lack of schools that were titled Distinguished Schools. Irvine Unified has 23 elementary schools, and only eight got it. I also noticed your district that you speak so highly of had no Distinguished Schools and that the big Capistrano Unified had three. Santa Ana then had six. Why do the numbers seem random? Also my child's school has the plaque on their wall but wasn't named on the website or the article written by the paper. Why is that?

April 27, 2010, The Wall Street Journal - The time-bomb that is public-pension obligations keeps ticking louder and louder. Eventually someone will have to notice. This month, Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research released a study suggesting a more than $500 billion unfunded liability for California's three biggest pension funds—Calpers, Calstrs and the University of California Retirement System. The shortfall is about six times the size of this year's California state budget and seven times more than the outstanding voter-approved general obligations bonds…

April 26, 2010, Jason Clemens and Robert Murphy, Forbes - The Golden State? More like Taxifornia. As the pain of April 15 fades, most Americans are bluntly aware that taxes matter. Too many politicians and bureaucrats, unfortunately, ignore this. They have forgotten that taxes change the incentives for people to work hard, save, invest and be entrepreneurial, the bedrock of a prosperous society. As the nation struggles with a sluggish recovery and deficits, it's worth noting the tax differences across the states...

April 23, 2010, City Journal, Spring 2010, Vol. 20, No, 2 - How public employees became members of the elite class in a declining California offers a cautionary tale to the rest of the country, where the same process is happening in slower motion. The story starts half a century ago, when California public workers won bargaining rights and quickly learned how to elect their own bosses—that is, sympathetic politicians who would grant them outsize pay and benefits in exchange for their support. Over time, the unions have turned the state’s politics completely in their favor. The result: unaffordable benefits for civil servants; fiscal chaos in Sacramento and in cities and towns across the state; and angry taxpayers finally confronting the unionized masters of California’s unsustainable government...

April 22, 2010, David Whiting, The Orange County Register - The last time Richard Broberg walked a teacher's picket line, President Richard Nixon hung out in San Clemente, the Capistrano Unified School District had fewer than 500 teachers and Broberg needed several other part-time jobs to make ends meet. Broberg recently retired. But on Thursday he walked in front of Newhart Middle School in Mission Viejo carrying a sign, "School Board Work With Teachers / Not Against Us!"

April 20, 2010, David Whiting, The Orange County Register - On May 14, all 27 Orange County superintendents are slated to unveil an ambitious and far-reaching proposal they say will take tens of millions of dollars out of bureaucracy and put the money into classrooms. Their three-point plan calls for rescinding existing educational regulations, placing a moratorium on future regulations – and giving complete budgetary control to local school districts.

April 16, 2010, Updated April 18, 2010, Steven Greenhut, The Orange County Register - Most of the news stories focus, understandably, on the unsustainable costs to government and taxpayers, as the bill for these millionaires' pensions come due. There's no escaping the financial problem, borne of elected officials who have bought labor peace by selling out current and future taxpayers to the politically muscular public employee unions. In a down economy, it's impossible to hide the numbers much longer. But the other real story is that these pension crises are undermining public services.

April 15, 2010, Robert P. Murphy, Ph.D. and Jason Clemens, Pacific Research Institute - The Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a free-market think tank based in San Francisco, found that California ranked dead last in a combined measure of the state's tax burden and tax structure according to the newly released study, Taxifornia.  It is the second study in the California Prosperity series, a PRI project to evaluate California's economic performance relative to other states...

April13, 2010, Carol Varavanich, The Orange County Register - Q. I wanted to hear your answer to the question I heard from Glenn Beck, "Do you think education is a right or a privilege?" A. I think every child in America has a right to an education. All children get to come to school here. In other countries, education is available only to those students deemed worthy or who score high enough and the others are weeded out, sent in another direction, or simply denied the chance to try. In America, we stand by our children and provide for all of them. All children have a right to an education in our country.

April 12, 2010, Carol Varavanich, The Orange County Register - Q. Last week there was a question about second-language learning. I didn't know if you were aware that both Capistrano Unified and Saddleback Valley Unified have two-way Spanish language immersion programs. They are much cheaper than private lessons, they are free! My own children, now in 11th and 12th grades, have been in this program since kinder, I can't tell you how beneficial it has been academically, socially, emotionally.... I could go on and on.

April 9, 2010, Updated April 11, 2010, Steven Greehut, The Orange County Register - Looks like California taxpayers are on the hook to make up public employee retirement system shortfalls to the tune of a half-trillion bucks. Union leaders and the politicians they basically own have lashed out at pension reformers, but the data continue to make it clear that decades of union dominance and pension-hiking deals are taking their toll on government budgets and on the fiscal health of the nation. Could anyone really think it wouldn't cost anything to create a class of government workers who can retire in their 50s with 80 percent, 90 percent – or even more than 100 percent – of their generous salaries?

April 1, 2010, Richard Rider, San Diego Newsroom - Here’s a depressing but documented comparison of California taxes and economic climate with the rest of the states. The news is breaking bad, and getting worse (I keep updating this factsheet): -California has the third worst state income tax in the nation, according to the Tax Foundation’s 2010 State Business Tax Climate Index: approximately 9.5 percent tax bracket at $46,349, and 10.55 percent at $1 million...

March 30 , 2010, David Whiting, The Orange County Register - In past years, unions claimed they had solutions. This year is different. To be sure, the educators had a few suggestions. Take money out of cash reserves, for one. But they admitted the sum wasn't much when compared with what is needed to restore education to what it was just a few years ago, let alone to the glory days when California was known for great public schools. Simply put, the educators offered ideas but were out of quick fixes. And, while I hate to say it, they were just about out of hope as well.

March 19, 2010, Alan Bock, Brian Calle and Mark Landsbaum, The Orange County Register - The state Legislature operates on the apparent notion that it should spend as much money as politicians want to spend, or at least as much as their constituents desire to have spent on them. That is a bankrupting philosophy, rooted in the idea that government is the granter of wishes, instead of the protector of rights.Ideally, government would never spend a dime on anything except those things that protect the peoples' God-given rights from those who would abuse them. Alas, we don't live in an ideal world...

March 16, 2010, RiShawn Biddle, The American Spectator - Even among the oft-intransigent locals that make up the American Federation of Teachers, United Teachers Los Angeles is renowned for its bellicose opposition to any kind of school reform. Notorious for its successful battles against efforts by former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan and one of his successors, Antonio Villaraigosa, to overhaul the infamously laggard Los Angeles Unified School District, United Teachers behaved in typical form last August when the nation's second-largest school district finally gave in to school reformers and agreed to a plan that included spinning off 12 of its worst-performing schools into private hands and creating 24 new schools to be run by a hodgepodge of operators. Besides filing a lawsuit against the district to prevent the reform measure from being implemented without "majority teacher approval," the union staged a series of protests against the plan. Declared A.J. Duffy, United Teachers' square-jawed president: "We will stand up against violations of the law and our members' rights"...

March 16, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - Q. Basically, what I want to know is why is there even a rule that the home district gets to say yea or nay to a transfer? What legal right do they have to do this? I understand that by law a child has to be schooled up to a certain age (whether home schooled, public or private). If I can just home school my kid or take her to any private school I can afford, then why can't I just take her to any public district I want?

March 16, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - South County district's layoff warnings stretch ball 12 years.

March 9, 2010, Carol Veravanich, The Orange County Register - Q. What is one specific thing that would help schools this year? The budget is awful. There is no money. Instead of all this shouting, give me one solid thing that could help, and I will join your fight to get it. Q. How many teachers are going to retire this year with all of these cuts coming?

March 6, 2010, Sandy Gregory, Your Turn, Contra Costa Times - California, always on the cutting edge of political correctness to the point of absurdity, is at it again. The State Board of Education has approved an environmental curriculum for K-12 public schools. A spokesman for the California EPA recently said "This (curriculum) is another example of California leading the nation in environmental policy." So there it is: political advocacy trumps core curriculum and common sense in educating our youth.

March 5, 2010, Updated March 22, 2010, Steven Greenhut, The Orange County Register - California's union-dominated, Democratic-controlled Legislature is temperamentally incapable of fixing the state's structural budget deficit, given that such a fix would require reduced government spending and the granting of fewer benefits to the state's class of government workers. As Rome burned, legislators last week debated a meaningless "no-cussing" measure, which suggests how out-of-touch these lawmakers remain...

February 22, 2010, Mark Landsbaum, The Orange County Register - Last week enough Republican legislators defected to join with tax-and-spend Democrats to approve $12.8 billion of new, allegedly temporary, taxes, including another penny on the sales tax, as much as a 0.5 percent hike in the income tax rate, a drastic two-thirds reduction of dependent care tax credits and a near doubling of the vehicle license fee. These people in Sacramento don't live in the real world. They believe things will improve if they tax people more even though they already are taxed more than people in 49 other states. They think increasing income taxes somehow is helpful to Californians who already pay the nation's highest income taxes. They think Californians who insisted that money raised by the state Lottery should be restricted to schools will suddenly change their minds. They foolishly believe Californians will approve a spending cap for the Legislature even though it would mean an additional two years of higher taxes. These people truly live in a make-believe world...

February 19, 2010, Updated March 22, 2010, Steven Greenhut, The Orange County Register - A new report from the California State Auditor should throw cold water on those who believe that the best way to solve the state's problems is by expanding government power, increasing government funding and creating new regulatory powers and agencies. The auditor has released its annual report analyzing how the various government agencies have implemented the findings from various auditor reports over the past two years. The reports, released last week, themselves spotlight problems within government agencies, but the beauty of the new "implementation" report is that it shows that the agencies frequently give the auditor the back of the hand and drag their feet on fixing the financial problems spotlighted in the audits...

February 5, 2010, Updated March 22, 2010, Steven Greenhut, The Orange County Register - To show the results of union dominance of the public education system, John Stossel, host of Fox News' "Stossel," on a recent show held up a convoluted chart that detailed, in small print, the amazing lengths to which New York school administrators must go to fire an incompetent teacher. The viewer sees a long and detailed chart filled with boxes connected by arrows. Then, Stossel reveals that what he's holding up for the camera is only the beginning, as he lets falls to the floor several more pages that had been hidden, accordion-style, behind the first page of the termination procedures chart. The joke – actually much sadder than funny – is on us, as we realize that there's no way that even the worst teacher can get sacked and that it's basically impossible to reform the public school system as it is currently structured. Yet local, state and federal officials go on proposing reforms that will surely turn the nations' bureaucratic, government-controlled public school systems into models of efficiency and high-performance learning...

January 29, 2010, Updated March 22, 2010, Steven Greenhut, The Orange County Register - Still, we should celebrate good ideas. And Baugh – who told me Tuesday that he accepts his share of the blame for this situation – ended his talk with a good proposal: "No candidate will be supported by this party who receives contributions and endorsements from public employee unions." Now we're getting somewhere. Union power needs to be attacked at its many sources, whether it means proposing pay and benefit cuts that are best for taxpayers but anger union officials, forcing unions to pay their tab to the state or exerting some countervailing political pressure to union muscle. It's heartening that more California officials are recognizing this truth...

January 15, 2010, Updated March 22, 2010, Steven Greenhut, The Orange County Register - Listen to former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, the dean of California liberalism, in a recent San Francisco Chronicle column: "The deal used to be that civil servants were paid less than private-sector workers in exchange for an understanding that they had job security for life. But we politicians – pushed by our friends in labor – gradually expanded pay and benefits ... while keeping the job protections and layering on incredibly generous retirement packages. ... This is politically unpopular and potentially even career suicide ... but at some point, someone is going to have to get honest about the fact." The time for honesty is now – or else forget about reform...

January 10, 2010, Updated March 22, 2010, Steven Greenhut, The Orange County Register - As the legislative session heats up in the coming days, there will be two choices: We can cut down government, unleash the private sector and allow free and industrious people to rebuild this once-glorious but now increasingly tawdry state. Or we can avoid the tough choices, ignore reality and find clever ways to temporarily balance the budget or not-so-clever means to make it easier to raise taxes. Those are the only two real choices. It will take a great deal of involvement and toughness by the people for the first course of action to come to pass. If Californians follow the second path, then, quite frankly, the future ain't so bright. The budget situation will get worse...

January 8, 2010, Updated March 22, 2010, Steven Greenhut, The Orange County Register - But the state's education budget also is filled with waste. The state spends 40 percent of its general fund on K-12 education, and yet many of California's school systems are almost criminally mismanaged and assure lifelong failure for the poorest students – thanks in large measure to union work rules and protections for incompetent, even abusive, teachers. The governor's proposed constitutional amendment will never come to pass, and, even if it did, it wouldn't do a thing other than create a legal mechanism to further expand school spending...