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Survey Finds Voters Want K-12 Schools Funded A newly released survey from the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California found that most Californians would be willing to pay higher taxes to maintain current funding for public schools, and most favor spending cuts in prisons and corrections. The survey also found that Californians are feeling gloomy about the economy and pessimistic about the state’s direction. Their approval ratings for the governor (30 percent) and Legislature (18 percent) are near record lows. Their view of state government is very negative: Just 28 percent of all adults say the two branches of government will be able to work together to accomplish a lot in the next year. “Residents have deep concerns about the economy and their own budgets, and they don’t see how California’s leaders will help guide the state through these difficult times,” said Mark Baldassare, PPIC president and CEO. When asked which of the four main areas of state spending they would most want to protect from budget cuts, 58 percent choose K-12 public education – the area most Californians have wanted to spare each of the nine times PPIC has posed the question. The repeated huge budget cuts of the past few years to education shows the wide disconnect between the wishes of voters and the actions of policymakers. Comparably, fewer respondents chose health and human services (17 percent) or higher education (15 percent) as areas to protect from cuts, and even fewer chose prisons and corrections (6 percent). Californians back up these views when asked if they would be willing to pay higher taxes to maintain current funding for these areas:
Across political parties, and regional and demographic groups, residents are most willing to pay more taxes to maintain funding at K-12 schools, with 79 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of Independents, and 49 percent of Republicans saying they would be willing to do so. On the flip side of this question – cutting spending to help reduce the budget deficit – Californians are least supportive of reductions in K-12 schools (82 percent oppose, 16 percent support) and largely opposed to cuts in higher education (65 percent oppose, 32 percent support) or health and human services (62 percent oppose, 34 percent support). A large majority (70 percent vs. 27 percent oppose) favor spending cuts in prisons. But while majorities want to protect K-12 schools and cut spending on prisons, Californians are as divided as their leaders on the overall strategy to deal with the state’s $20 billion budget deficit: 41 percent favor a mix of spending cuts and tax increases and 37 percent favor mostly spending cuts (9 percent favor mostly tax increases). Half – 51 percent – favor lowering the two-thirds legislative vote requirement to pass a state budget. The PPIC survey is based on a phone survey of 2,001 California adult residents interviewed from Jan. 12-19. The sampling error is plus or minus 2 percent for all adults, and plus or minus 3 percent for likely voters. Source: Association of California School Administrators. |
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