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.

California has set some of the highest education standards in the nation, and the percentage of schools at or above the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) target of 800 is up from 2007 in all school levels, including a 3.3% increase in elementary schools, 5.7% in middle schools and 2.8% in high schools. This steady growth of academic achievement is impossible to maintain without proper funding. The high academic standards that our state is so proud of will fall if we do not start putting education first. We must consider the consequences of these cuts on our future doctors, engineers, teachers, scientists, and yes, even politicians. We have crippled a generation of students because our state government has failed to put students first and has robbed them of their future.

In my district alone, $8.25 million in cuts have resulted in layoffs of 36 full-time employees, including nurses, high school counselors, assistant principals and music teachers, and the merger of two high schools (Orange Coast Middle College High School and Coastline Early College High School) as well as the release of more than 100 temporary teachers.

It is time to put our children first. It is time to guarantee that every student can go to a school with small class sizes, state-of-the-art technology, athletic and fine arts programs, counselors, librarians and most important, the resources necessary to succeed. It is time to come together as a community and insist that education become a priority in the state of California.

MARTHA FLUOR is a member of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District board of trustees.