A NEW STUDY from the Public Policy Institute of California predicts that a majority of the state's schools will fail to reach No Child Left Behind's impossibly high goals for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) next year. "Very soon almost every public school in California will be labeled a failure," the study's authors write.

The program mandates that schools and districts receiving Title I federal funds make satisfactory yearly improvement toward an established individual goal in math and English. A school which consistently misses its goal over several years is eventually subject to major restructuring. These efforts are costly and their success has been mixed.

The study identified many factors behind its findings but suggested that the larger problem is a  system which does not account for the significant differences in challenges between schools. "Fifty percent of elementary schools with the highest share of low-income students made AYP in 2007, whereas 98 percent of elementary schools with the lowest share of low-income students made AYP," according to the PPIC.

"As a result, a school that inherits many high-achieving students but teaches them very little can be labeled a success, whereas a school that inherits many low-achieving students and teaches them a great deal can be labeled a failure," the authors write. California has a high percentage of disadvantaged students.

The situation will not likely improve given the economy and severe cutbacks and larger class sizes California's schools face next year as a result of state budget negotiations.

WHAT CAN BE DONE besides a complete overhaul of the NCLB rules? The study makes many worthwhile suggestions:

• Invest in preschool. High-quality programs can help close the achievement gap.

• Re-evaluate programs which are not working. The study points to a remedial program for students who have failed the high school exit exam as one which has been ineffective, yet the current budget allocates $73 million to it.

• New, innovative programs which work should be nurtured, piloted and implemented statewide.

• Reform school finance by replacing it with a weighted formula more closely tied to the actual costs of educating students. Schools which have more students from low socioeconomic background should naturally receive more funding, but those with higher regional costs should also receive more dollars.

While few would argue that many reforms are needed in California's education system, NCLB has had an unhealthy effect on the education community nationwide, something Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the American Federation of Teachers conference last week.

"This idea of labeling and stigmatizing schools as failures -- it is unbelievably demoralizing to faculty; it's confusing to parents."

I ATTENDED MY youngest child's "graduation" ceremony from elementary school today. It was a touching morning filled with awards and a montage of baby photos, girls dressed up in their best dresses and boys squirming uncomfortably in collared shirts. As a long-time parent, I've attended quite a few of these affairs.

But at the end came something that was markedly different from any ceremony I've attended before. We bid goodbye to a favorite teacher. My son's beloved part-time health teacher received a pink slip this spring. In good years these "temporary" teachers find themselves with a job again after the budget issues have settled down. But this is not to be this year.

A cheer went up among the children when her name was announced along with the other teachers. She's a favorite with the kids. My quiet little son, who seldom relays details of his school day, often came home with stories about the great discussions he's had in her class.

Clearly this is a teacher who is making an impact. And yet we seem to be unable to afford her salary any longer. This is the grim reality of state budget cuts. A family without a second income will be making fewer purchases in the community. Next year's students will not receive the benefit of her instruction.

It is a chain of ruin with profound impacts on the future of our children and the economy.

I went up to her afterward and assured her she would land on her feet. Unable to find child care today, she had her small daughter with her. She thanked me for my words of support and I could see the tears forming in her eyes.

I think back to the day I watched the TEA party protesters in Ventura gleefully patting their wallets in giddy celebration of taking down the government.

This is the government: a now unemployed health teacher who really gets through to her pupils, holding the hand of her 3-year-old.

AT $26.5 BILLION, California sits at the top of the heap among the first wave of state allocations for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds.

In a state wrestling with a ballooning budget deficit dependent on a series of unpopular ballot propositions in the May 19 special election, the federal stimulus money is being eyed with great interest.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wasted no time in being one of the first governors to ask for education dollars. Early last week he applied for nearly $1.2 billion in funding for schools with large numbers of poor and disabled students as well as for improvements in lunch program facilities. On Thursday, he applied for $5 billion more which would come with more flexibility. All told, the state is expected to receive $85 billion in federal money over the next two years.

"We've taken steps to protect our schools from the full brunt of our economic situation, and this funding will restore many of the difficult cuts that had to be made to education," the governor said. "I'm committed to passing it directly onto schools as quickly as possible."

This is in contrast to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who recently irritated school officials in her state by declining to accept some stimulus money because she was afraid it would permanently swell the budget.

Locally, Ventura Unified School District Superintendent Trudy Arriaga said she remains hopeful the federal money could help offset a few of the $10 million in cuts the district will need to make in the next two years. "We did not balance our budget on it, but we are absolutely counting on it," she said.

OUR CITIES ARE jockeying for a piece of the pie as well. Last month Ventura Mayor Christy Weir and Council member Neal Andrews joined hundreds of city leaders nationwide in lobbying for funds for key projects during the National League of Cities Congressional City Conference. Our city has secured $4.6 million in ARRA funding and is applying for $30 million more in competitive grants.

"We met with Senators Boxer and Feinstein and Congresswoman Capps and Congressman Gallegly," Weir said. "They or their staff were all willing to listen and take the materials we brought. No promises were made, but they responded positively to the importance of our Surfers' Point renovation project, which was the priority for funding that we brought to their attention."

Money may also be available for the Museum of Ventura County, Weir said. The city also plans on submitting the $10 million U.S. 101/Victoria Ave. northbound offramp project for funding when application details are provided.

Most of the ARRA funding available to cities, Weir said, will be in the areas of public safety (COPS grants could prevent cuts to our police force), transportation (street paving and traffic signals) and energy (weatherization programs, renewable energy systems, etc). Money is also available to buy foreclosed properties to use for affordable housing. "The city will use our money to buy houses and turn them over to the Housing Authority for low-income rentals," Weir said.

Ventura also hopes to receive federal money available through the National Endowment for the Arts to maintain a key position in the Cultural Affairs staff and shore up our arts grants program, which will be cut nearly in half. A grant is also being sought for homeless prevention issues.

Other California cities have also been intent on using these funds in creative ways. Six cities up north are pooling their funds. Still others, like Westlake Village and Agoura Hills, sought to swap funds with other cities until they were told the deals were improper.

This one-time money will not keep any local budgets from bleeding red ink. But a band-aid feels sure good right now.

And the Stricklands continue to evade meeting with educators

TEACHERS WERE WEARING PINK. Administrators and school board members were wearing pink. So were parents, teen-agers, little kids, babies and dogs. There were pink ribbons and banners and capes and hats and scarves today out on Victoria Avenue in Ventura.

But most of us were really just seeing red.

More than 26,000 teachers across the state received layoff notices or "pink slips" today, according to the Pink Friday web site. Today's protest was part of many rallies called across the state, but Ventura's was surely the largest in our county. Hundreds of folks, many layers deep, held banners and signs in a ribbon of humanity stretching from Telephone Road to the 126 Freeway.

The probable teacher layoffs, part of a recent $8.4 billion cut to K-12 education, impact not only their families and the local economy but also the education of a generation of California children who will be faced with such things as larger class sizes, crumbling facilities, aging textbooks, fewer counselors and librarians, and less instruction in P.E., arts and music.

"Without a decent education, our children and our future are nothing," said Rosa Granado, a fourth-grade teacher at Sunkist Elementary in Port Hueneme.

Parent Bill Walthall, also of Port Hueneme, worried that the teachers receiving pink slips today would not be rehired when the economy turns around. The younger teachers with less seniority are always the first to be laid off, he said, yet they are some of the most energetic and dynamic educators we have. "We're going to lose them forever," he added.

If this isn't bad enough, State Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor announced today that the precarious package of cuts, revenue increases, borrowing and legislative trickery we just passed as a budget at the end of February has missed the mark by a mile. Yes, there's already an $8 billion hole, Taylor said.

MEANWHILE, elusive legislative duo Tony and Audra Strickland are still playing hide-and-seek with county superintendents asking for a local meeting, according to a very reliable education source. Both skipped a long-scheduled gathering in January with our education leaders. Tony opted instead to attend a card-table event in the rain which was only noticed to the public the day before.

The Stricklands, along with fellow Republican George Runner, who was also a no-show at the  meeting with educators, were given a chance to reschedule at a time convenient to them. Tony's staff has ignored a succession of emails, my source tells me, and Audra recently responded that she was busy for at least the next two months but would meet, one-on-one only, with individual superintendents in her Sacramento office.

I guess Audra thinks it is a better bargain for taxpayers to fly all 19 of our county superintendents individually to Sacramento to meet with her. Or perhaps she expects them to pay for the trips themselves and leave the mayhem going on in their districts behind.

Local parents looking to the Stricklands for leadership in Sacramento in the public education arena should just throw in the towel at this point.

Better yet, let's gather up a few pink slips to throw.

SCHOOL EMPLOYEES statewide will be taking to the streets on Friday, March 13 to protest the estimated 20,000-25,000 layoff notices going out to teachers across California. Here in Ventura, the Pink Friday protest begins at 4 p.m. at the corner of Victoria Avenue and Telephone Road.

"It's a show of support for the teachers who are getting pink slips," said Ventura Unified Educators Association President Steve Blum. Other demonstrations are expected across Ventura County, Blum said.

With education taking up about half of the state's budget, the reduction of $8.4 billion to our schools was part of an agreement passed by legislators on Feb. 19 to plug a deficit projected at $41.6 billion over the next two years.

In the Ventura Unified School District, 17 Reduction in Force (RIF) notices will be sent out to teachers in addition to letters notifying an additional 86 temporary instructors that they may not have a job next year. Temporary teachers, Blum said, are those who have been hired to fill in for those on leave or to fill "categorical" positions like music, art or P.E. State law requires permanent teachers to be notified by March 13 if they will have jobs next year or not.

Ventura Unified will need to trim $10 million from its budget in the next two years. An unknown number of "classified" positions such as janitors, secretaries, etc. will also be lost, Blum said.

THE NEWS IS FAR MORE GRIM in other parts of the county. The Conejo Valley Unified School District is sending notices to 160 employees. Fellow Star blogger Brian Dennert reports an astounding 231 employees in the Simi Valley Unified School District will be notified their jobs are in jeopardy.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Board of Education will vote today (March 10) on whether to issue layoff notices to about 9,000 employees.

"It's ugly out there," Blum said.

Without the revenue package passed by legislators with the budget, even more of our educators would be out on the streets next year, a fact conveniently ignored by radio shock jocks John and Ken of KFI-AM 640 last weekend at a "Tax Revolt Day" in Fullerton. Ventura County Supervisor Peter Foy joined the event with the giant inflatable ATM he hauls around with him. (I've always wondered if in Foy's case that stood for Avoiding Taxing Millionaires.)

While these radio goofballs partied last weekend, more than 20,000 teachers were likely wondering if they could feed their families next year. And up in Sacramento, Sen. Roy Ashburn of Bakersfield was giving an interview to the Sacramento Bee: "Ashburn, who is termed out of his Senate seat next year, said that 'more than a few' Republican legislators acknowledged privately that the budget deficit could not be patched without tax hikes." But they just didn't want to be the ones to vote for them, apparently.

Let's hope they're not laying off math instructors. Math skills are urgently needed in Sacramento.

WHAT'S THE BEST REASON to not cut our state education funding? In the future we'll need sharp minds to get us out of these budget messes.

I've been hunkered down for the past few days looking over documents and trying to make some sense of the budget package the governor just signed and how it will affect the bottom line of our schools. It's a precarious hodgepodge of $8.4 billion in cuts offset by reforms and accounting tricks. And all of this hinges on a package of ballot measures up in May, some designed to reshuffle prior ballot measures.

This labyrinthine budget reduces Prop. 98 guaranteed school funding from now through 2010 and then adds in another ballot measure to help to help restore the lost funds in 2011. Yet another tinkers with Prop. 98 formulas because the state now needs to borrow from future lottery earnings that would've gone to our schools.

Several of the seven ballot measures coming up on May 19 are so complicated that one could safely predict most voters probably won't do anything but vote no in protest, if they bother to cast a ballot at all.

AND THERE'S MORE: Categorical funding for many important programs is being slashed 20 percent between now and 2010. Included in this are programs for gifted students, college preparation, middle and high school counseling, deferred maintenance, technology, English language acquisition, summer school, ROP programs, and, of course, arts and music. In return, school districts are being given the "flexibility" to move these pots of funding around, but it's sort of like figuring out which child doesn't get dinner that night.

Upcoming federal money, which would help reduce state taxes, would have no effect on K-12 classroom funding this budget year, according to the California Department of Education. In the longer term, "these resources will have a minimal impact on reducing the size and magnitude of the state reductions in education funding," according to the California Association of School Business Officials.

AS YOU CAN SURMISE, budgeting for the next school year is like playing pin the tail on the weasel. It's a moving target which the dedicated folks who can actually figure this stuff out HAVE to wrestle with because the deadline for letting teachers know whether or not they will have jobs next year is March 13. Yet, they won't have any answers until June. Maybe.

Here in Ventura, school officials are looking at a mighty big gap. "... It will not look like business as usual here," said Superintendent Trudy Arriaga. "We should not be celebrating a state budget that is cutting $10 million out of a little budget like the Ventura Unified School District has.

"We should be outraged."

Most people just pay attention to all this by how it affects them personally. If you have a child in the public schools in California, expect bigger class sizes, no new textbooks, fewer supplies and technology, less remedial help, reduced maintenance and less emphasis on programs such as arts, music and physical education. Some familiar faces in teaching, staff and administration will be gone.

"About the only thing schools won't have less of is testing," said Ventura Unified Educators Association President Steve Blum. "The more-and-more testing crowd made sure state testing will be untouched.

"All this together is not good. This generation's shortsighted approach to preparing the next generation for the future is sad."

IT'S TIME ONCE AGAIN for another shameless plug for my favorite non-profit group, the Ventura Education Partnership. Our biggest fundraiser of the year is coming up Saturday night, the Festival of Talent, which showcases our most talented youth.

In the past year, VEP has given more than $100,000 to Ventura Unified School District classrooms through a teacher granting program. Our Healthy Schools Collaborative has distributed dollars to health and wellness programs and puts on the annual event, SummerFest, which drew more than 4,000 children and families last year for a day of healthy fun.

Our Arts Collaborative is working on an Arts Master Plan for the district and helps bring money into our classrooms for art and music. Our Early Learning Collaborative works with the Ventura Neighborhood for Learning to help children under the age of 6 with school readiness.

We've done great work and have forged wonderful partnerships within the business community and the city. Our volunteers and donors are among the brightest, most motivated people I have ever known. We are united by a common bond: to do what is best for our community's children. It is an honor to be among this group of citizens.

We are always looking for sponsors for the grants we give to our schools and this year the need is more urgent than ever. To find out how you can help, go here.

Come watch a great show Saturday, Feb. 28. The Festival of Talent starts at 7 p.m. in the Ventura High School Auditorium. Tickets are $10 and available for pre-sale at all Ventura school sites. They will be $15 at the door. Come early and join in our Mardi Gras festivities at 6 p.m.

I NOTED WITH GREAT IRONY the large crowd which filled City Council Chambers and an overflow room a week ago to complain about the closing of one of Ventura's three libraries, a number that exceeds what other cities in the county-run system can provide.

"Just wait until you see what else is going away," I thought to myself as I watched the impassioned speakers. As one of the city's Cultural Affairs Commissioners, I had been briefed just a few days before on the possible cuts our city is facing in the coming months.

Over the last few days, city staff have been huddled in rooms listening to more bad news: the latest revenue figures have come in under what was predicted and the cuts will be more extensive than originally feared. At least $4.6 million in midyear cuts will need to be in place by March 1. By July, another estimated $8 million will need to be trimmed. This comes after a $7 million round of cuts made over the last year.

As the city's Budgeting for Outcomes teams go over the list of city services and prioritize, it has been apparent to many that the Community Services Department will bear the brunt of the cuts. Targeted are arts and historic programs including ArtWalks and both street fairs, recreation and arts classes for children and adults, senior services, winter-time operations of the community pool, parks maintenance, and the list goes on. Many of these cuts could be effective as soon as March 1.

Every single department will feel the sting and jobs will be lost all over. City Manager Rick Cole has been busy trying to put a happier spin on this evisceration: "redesigning city government for the 21st century," he calls it and it does bring opportunities to think out of the box.

THESE DIFFICULT TIMES call for all of us to work together for the common good. Our public employee unions -- especially those in public safety who have lobbied for extra compensation and benefits -- must come back to the table and make some concessions. While they certainly earn their pay, givebacks might be necessary to save personnel in their own ranks.

Our citizens, who are used to government taking care of their needs but are unwilling to pay even the slightest increase in fees or taxes, should ask themselves how much they value their community and consider paying just slightly more to keep the services we all depend on.

To the NIMBYs who would like to micromanage all new private infill projects that could bring sales tax revenue and jobs into our city: you are short sighted and cutting yourselves off at the knees. We can balance quality-of-life issues and still generate revenue.

To those community volunteers, like City Corps and San Buenaventura Friends of the Library, you are the best among us. Public/private partnerships will help keep us afloat. My friends in the education community are also looking at enormous cuts. Groups like the Ventura Education Partnership will help bridge those gaps.

Along with redesigning our government, we need to redesign our attitudes, too.

FOOTHILL HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER Melissa Wantz knows a thing or two about creativity. The lucky students who have passed through her English classrooms on two Ventura campuses have been encouraged to go beyond the merely expository and work on writing for just the pure joy of it.

Yet in this noble pursuit of stretching and growing young minds and instilling a love for writing, she has often felt thwarted by the constant spector of the standardized test.

"I think at a certain level every human being is a creator and has a deep need to be creative in some way, but when the only mandated method of measuring achievement is through standardized tests, and when so much depends on the outcome of those tests for our schools, the opportunities to practice the creative arts are pushed to the back burner for most teachers, myself included," Wantz said.

So Wantz came up with an idea for a contest to support and showcase the creative work of high school writers, artists and photographers in Ventura County.

The contest will award cash prizes paid for through a Ventura Education Partnership grant and an opportunity to be published in a book compiled by the journalism class at Foothill High.

Both the book and contest take their name from a mythical bird which dies in a fiery death and rises to live once again -- the Phoenix. "Our motto, 'Rising from the Ashes of Standardized Testing,' is taken from this idea of life after death," Wantz writes on her Web site.

TEACHERS AND ADMINISTRATORS across the state will be forced to get creative very shortly when it comes to the budget process. Estimates vary depending on what side of the aisle is doing the cutting, but classrooms statewide could take anywhere from a $4 billion to $10 billion hit this year. So what could go?

If it was up to Ventura Unified Education Association President Steve Blum, it would be all that bubble testing, at least for a year or two. Blum, along with many others, has proposed this idea to state officials.

Chip Fraser, a teacher at Pacific High School in Ventura, seconds the motion. "Not only does it cost money to do the test, but the costs of the materials purchased to help teachers 'teach to the test' are staggering," he said.

How much does testing to support the goals of the unfunded mandate that is the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act cost us? Ventura Unified School District Superintendent Trudy Arriaga estimated it costs $30 million per grade in this state to test students.

BUT BLUM DOESN'T realistically see testing going away any time soon. "The state and the feds are unlikely to go along with this idea because it was their idea to do all this testing. People almost always like their own ideas," he said.

Indeed, today our president is delivering a speech to mark the 7th anniversary of the signing of the NCLB Act, which he sees as one of his successes.

Most would agree that measuring a student's progress on agreed-upon goals is a good idea. But many teachers have told me that the rigors of NCLB go beyond merely stifling creativity. Around the country, programs for gifted students are being shuttled; art, music, drama and physical education have taken a back seat and students and teachers alike are just plain stressed out.

"Having started teaching at the beginning of No Child Left Behind, I've gotten to the point where if I can't see measurable gains in my students' work from week to week, I get really nervous and start increasing the pressure on my students, and that's not right," Wantz said.

And debate continues whether the law is even doing the job it set out to do.

With the dawn of a new presidential adminstration, comes the time to re-examine this testing mania. I hope it becomes a priority for Barack Obama and his new Congress.

IT'S HISTORY. With a unanimous vote tonight, the Ventura City Council took steps to erase the controversial 911 fee from the books. Anybody who wants a refund will be able to get one.

No doubt a very vocal portion of the city, including the editor of the Star, did not like the fee. And there are those, such as an Orange County law firm which specializes in class-action lawsuits, who saw an opportunity for litigation and fat legal fees.

City Attorney Ariel Calonne explained that the legal environment has changed dramatically since the fee and its opt-out were first proposed last January. A ruling last spring opened the door for class-action suits on this issue.

When the opt-out provision was first presented, I knew it would be an administrative nightmare. That has proven to be true. Service providers and city staff have struggled mightily with it. Fifteen percent of the city's telephone lines were opted out. But because of technical delays, Assistant Police Chief Ken Corney said, not one person has yet been charged the $17.88-per-call fee which would have been imposed for those who opted out of the monthly fee.

It's also been a public relations nightmare. Many still don't understand that if you opted out, you would not be charged for calling 911 on behalf of somebody else. Nor did they realize the fee would've been waived for first-time callers.

BUT MY FAMILY DIDN'T opt out and we willingly paid the $1.49-per-month charge on two land lines and three cell phones because we knew the money saved through funding the costs of the city's 911 system in this manner would be used to pay for our badly needed School Resource Officer (SRO) program (which I explained about in an earlier post) and a team of officers for trouble spots in the city.

Since Council member Neal Andrews has taken the unilateral step to end the 911 fee by proposing this policy consideration, I hope he will also be a leader in efforts to maintain a sufficient revenue stream to keep our citizens and our students safe and healthy.

With the possibility of $8 million being trimmed from the general fund by next year, coming on the heels of $7 million in cuts made in the last year, there isn't much left to cut that won't hurt. The public safety budget makes up half of the general fund. Every single attempt at cost recovery for public safety services in the form of fees has met with resistance from some corner.

The Police Department pulled in officers from patrol for the SRO program when school started this fall in the hopes of replacing them when the 911 fee revenues kicked in, Corney said. The school district, which pays for the other half of the SRO program, can't afford to pay for it in its entirety. The schools are looking at devastating mid-year cuts of their own unless the state legislature can get its act together. (And today the state's Republican leaders proposed a $10.6 billion cut in the education budget.)

THE $35,000 THE COUNCIL allocated last summer for Downtown foot patrols on Friday and Saturday nights is nearly gone and won't last until the end of the fiscal year in July. This would've been supplemented with 911 fee revenues, too. Add into this mix the fact that aggravated assaults are up 25 percent in the city, Corney said, and a rash of daytime burglaries have been going on in east Ventura.

Since public safety is such a priority for our city, the budget-cutting teams now being assembled will likely look at other areas. Perhaps we will have to quit heating the pools in the aquatics center in the winter, which will greatly affect our swim teams, or stop cutting the grass under the city's soccer fields on a regular basis. Many items will be looked at.

The Star's editorial writers called for us to think seriously about joining Oxnard and Port Hueneme in putting forth a general-purpose sales tax hike, which would require just a simple majority vote.

It's an idea worth exploring.