Teachers from the Santa Ana Unified School District are among educators from 13 low-income school systems protesting at the Capitol in Sacramento right now over funding that may be lost with the enactment of the 2009-2010 state budget.
The Quality Education and Investment Act was established in 2006 to provide additional resources to help eligible low-performing schools reduce class sizes, provide more support to students and increase student achievement. More than $402 million from the state's general fund has gone to the QEIA since its formation.
The current budget includes a one-time funding swap for QEIA, and without legislative action teachers from the effected schools fear that their districts will be penalized financially. Today's protest, which continues until 3 p.m., is aimed at getting assurances from legislators that such penalties will not be assessed against the state's poorer districts.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.