Community Commentary:

Very soon, more than 6 million California students will head back to school for a new year, and parents, teachers, administrators and community members will see and feel the profound toll state budget cuts have taken on our public education system.

The most recent of these cuts occurred when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a budget last month that slashed $5.7 billion from education, in addition to the billions of dollars in cuts already made last February and September.

Once again, the governor and legislative leaders have failed our students. Our children are paying the consequences for California’s unacceptable school funding system, and these cuts will absolutely impact our state’s ability to compete and succeed in the future.

Although the governor and legislators will proudly point out that the budget does not suspend Proposition 98’s minimum education funding guarantee, the simple fact is that an accounting maneuver was utilized to cut $1.6 billion from Proposition 98 in the fiscal year that ended June 30, thereby reducing the school funding base for 2009-10.

Even with the eventual repayment of these funds as required by the state constitution, the K-12 funding cuts will have a devastating and lasting impact on public education and future generations.

Increased class sizes, cuts to key education programs, additional layoffs of teachers, librarians, counselors and administrators and a shorter school year are just a few of the overwhelming consequences our students face. As a school board member, it is heartbreaking to see the destruction our broken funding system is causing our schools and students. If we want to live in a state that thrives in business, science, technology, agriculture and education, we simply cannot sustain further cuts to the education of future generations.

California’s schools have been subjected to historic cuts unlike anything we have seen since the Great Depression. Our school districts have done everything in their power to dampen the effect of these cuts, but the reality is that our students’ education was already woefully underfunded — with California ranking 47th in the nation in per-pupil spending.