The Reasons NOT to Put LA’s Adult Ed on the Chopping Block

You think the cuts to K-12 schools are bad? Wait until I tell you about adult education.

Thursday afternoon, Arnold Schwarzenegger presented the state legislature with his revised budget proposal. Education cuts are going to be far worse than he thought, he said.

Due to the global economic crisis, “our revenues are coming in way below projections…..For the first time since 1938, California faces a decline in personal income,” said the governor gravely.

As a consequence, Schwarzenegger proposes 6.4 billion cuts in public education funding—- and that’s if the ballot propositions pass on Tuesday. If they don’t, and additional $ 3 billion will be cut. In addition to K-12, programs for the CSUs and UCs will also be slashed. Cuts to community colleges will be among the deepest.

What he did not say directly in his press conference— and what has thus far flown under the press radar—is that one of the biggest percentage cuts of all will be to the state’s adult education programs, which in Los Angeles are administered by LAUSD.

Up until Thursday, California’s adult ed programs were facing 20 percent cuts.

That 20 percent was bad enough to touch off a noisy protest by several hundred very worried grown-up students who showed up with lots of hand-painted placards at LAUSD’s Beaudry Street headquarters on Thursday, a little after lunchtime.

But that was before Arnold’s budget announcement came.

Now, Ed Morris, the Assistant Superintendent for LAUSD’s Adult Education program, told me, the word is that adult ed is scheduled to be cut by a total of 50 percent.

Fifty percent!? Really? I said. It seemed unbelievable.

“Really,” said Morris grimly. Ed Morris should know, since he’s the guy who oversees all of the county’s adult programs.

Yes, I know we have all been talking a lot about teacher layoffs and other education cuts.

But let me tell you why the slashing of adult education is an issue you should care about.

First a little context.

According to a forecast released Thursday about 54,000 jobs will be lost in Los Angeles County in 2009 (nearly as many as lost in 2008).

The outlook for 2010 is expected to be only slightly better, with 34,000 jobs lost.

In light of all the layoffs, there is one LA business that is booming; Yep, you guessed it. Adult education—which offers a wide array of job training and skills classes at public schools all over LA County.

Fees for courses range from $20 to slightly over $100, for certain kinds of higher level certification programs. So it is job training that is affordable for those who have lost their regular paychecks—making adult ed the best game in town when it comes to retraining and/or rebooting one’s skills iso as to get back in the labor force.

For this reason, places like the East LA Skills Center have seen a huge jump in attendance—as have adult ed schools statewide.

There is a 400 person waiting list for Skills Center’s solar panel installation training class alone, Ed Morris told me. (By the way, this is the class that is being done in partnership with Homeboy Industries.)

And there are dauntingly large waiting lists for many of the school’s other most popular programs—like the the classes in medical billing, and fiber optic cable installation (which trains people to climb telephone poles in order to string up the phone company’s snazzy new fiber optic cables).

“There’s a really big waiting list for that one,” said Morris—mainly because Verizon will take nearly all the installers that LAUSD can graduate.

And it’s not just blue collar workers taking the courses. “We’ve got real estate agents and people from Countrywide mortgage trying to get into our construction training programs.”

In fact, last year 1.2 million California adults took classes. In addition to job training, they took them to complete coursework for their high school diplomas, to learn to speak English, or to bring their basic reading and math skills up to par—all things that are necessary for a functioning, work-ready population. Adult education also offers programs for seniors, which will likely be first on the chopping block.

Four hundred thousand of those Adult Ed students took their classes last year in Los Angeles.

“While the economy is collapsing and people are being tossed out of jobs, we’ve seen adult ed classes become more important than ever,” said Ernest Kettenring, the chair of UTLA’s Adult Ed Committee. “When people lose their jobs, they often need something that will help them get back on the horse.”

Both Kettenring and Morris said that one of the reasons these programs are getting some of the deepest slashes is that, unlike other imperiled line items, adult ed has no politically organized constituency (Read: money and lobbyists).

Both men also spoke long and passionately about the fact that providing a way for lower income parents to get better educated (and thus employed) is an essential element in helping their kids have a better shot at educational success.

And did I mention that adult ed is one of the programs most likely to keep a recent parolee from returning to lock-up? No? Well, consider it mentioned.

Given that Schwarzenegger is so desperate to lower prison costs that he is proposing the release of a grand total of 43,000 state prisoners to federal authorities, and to the various counties for jailing—you’d think somebody up there in budget land would be able to connect the dots regarding the collateral benefits of adult ed.

But so far they haven’t.

Bottom line: Yes, we understand that California’s in a world of fiscal hurt. But cutting FIFTY percent out of the adult education budget defines the term penny wise and pound foolish.

Don’t do it, Arnold.

And the rest of us must not let it happen.

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PS: in general going to be a lively day at the old school district headquarters today. Although, on Tuesday, a judge stopped today’s planned one day teacher strike, there are plots afoot for “civil disobedience” at 10 a.m. at the Beaudry Street headquarters—at least so says the UTLA union website. Plus there are to be pre-school picketings at all school locations.

NOTE: Everyone is to wear black. (Sounds fetching!)