40% of the California budget goes toward education but it's not enough. I can confirm that, at least in our schools. My wife helped my son's Kindergarten teacher move out of her old classroom to go to a new school and the whole truck full of stuff was all things the teacher bought herself.
But where does the money disappear between taxes and teachers? If you guessed fat salaries for Democratic-voting University of California and California State employees, you would be right; their rolls increased 300% since 1998 and now have to be furloughed. But there is a lot more waste at all levels yet neither the administration nor the unions nor the government wants to accept any part in the problem.
Still, the problem is there and we all know it, so in times of a budget crisis should the same schools that insisted they had to put vending machines near children in the early 1990s (because parents refused to keep approving tax increases and they needed more revenue, they said) and have now taken them back out because of their blame in the obesity epidemic, be going to the other extreme and paying for sushi and spinach tortellini in butternut squash sauce for students? These meals are subsidized, 1,000 places a day and 650,000 meals. How will you get sushi that is not dangerous to the students or the ecology for 650,000 more meals a day...just in LA?
California zealots always use the term 'national leader' when they do something crazy in the belief money comes from a magical, happy place. But it isn't leadership to waste money solving a problem that is not in the wheelhouse of schools, who should be teaching and not involved in social justice or health fads.
Is chocolate milk really the enemy? L.A. loves celebrities and this seems to be a Jamie Oliver fetish rather than a health policy. Board member Tamar Galatzan, who voted against banning chocolate milk, the district was letting "a TV chef who's trying to get publicity" dictate the decision. "I think we are demonizing milk," Galatzan said, and noted correctly that the supposedly healthy juice the district serves at breakfast has more sugar than flavored milk.
