Start fighting now or all school districts will suffer

The current fiscal crisis in our state and its grave impact on our public schools is at once embarrassing and perilous.

Our esteemed elected officials in Sacramento are making a mockery of our most important and precious resource: the education of our children. Instead of looking to the future to make this great state even greater, they're playing a cruel game of chess using our kids as pawns.

The issue, as they define it, is that spending outpaces income. Rein in spending and the problem is solved. But how much more can possibly be taken away from our schools before they're crippled beyond repair?

The governor already suspended Prop. 98 once, with the threat of doing it again, and hasn't returned that money to our schools. Additionally, California public schools are already severely underfunded and rank 46th in our nation for per pupil spending. One only has to look at the "Quality Counts 2008" report to see that California hovers just above the bottom of the list in most categories, including per pupil spending, achievement and chance of success as compared to the rest of the nation.

Enough is enough.

A group of concerned citizens in Las Virgenes Unified School District has banded together to form CORE (Californians Organized to Rescue Education.) Represented in this group are all the schools in LVUSD through their parent-faculty organizations. We're working as well as with the 12th District Conejo Council PTA and the school districts of Conejo Valley, Moorpark, Oak Park and Simi Valley to organize a forum at 4:30 p.m. on Wed., April 2 at the Thousand Oaks High School Performing Arts building, 2323 N. Moorpark Road.

This forum is intended to provide vital and clear information regarding the impending budget cuts and to call the community to action to compel our elected leaders to find more stable ways to fund our schools and to fund them at the levels mandated by law.

It's incumbent upon all of us to voice our concerns about this issue; attending this forum will be a public and effective way of doing just that.

Education isn't a partisan issue; it affects everyone today and tomorrow. Our message to Sacramento is simple: "Stop balancing the state's budget on the backs of our children's education." Ziona Friedlander Penny Salomon Co-chairs, CORE