Danville Moms Join Crowd of Hundreds to Rally Against Education Cuts

Kelly Kaplan takes education cuts personally.

Just mentioning the dearth of funding in San Ramon Unified School District moves her to tears.

"It's just such a sad situation," said the Danville mom, who joined more than 200 others at a Pleasant Hill rally, where state legislators and academic dignitaries gathered at College Park High School to protest cuts to education spending at the state level.

Kaplan and fellow Danville parent Becky Sargent held up signs that read, "Education: Our best investment." On their shirts, they wore Parent-Teacher Association pins emblazoned with the words, "Children are our best investment."

Parents, students, activists and other stakeholders converged at the run-down high school to make a statement: Make education a higher priority in California, which has some of the lowest per-pupil spending in the nation.

"We wanted to come here because, basically, education isn't a top priority for our nation," said Sargent, who has a 13-year-old daughter in a Danville school.

California's broken budget this year holds implications far beyond slashing programs and laying off employees this year, Sargent said, it means that the state and the nation won't be able to hold its own in an ever-competitive global economy.

"We have to consider the long-term effects of what we're doing," she said toward the end of the hour-long rally. "Yeah, it's about our kids, but it's about our country, too."

Folks came from Concord, Antioch, San Ramon, Danville, Alamo, Moraga and various other cities around the East Bay. More than a dozen speakers from state legislators to leaders of business and education organizations and even a former cast member of the TV show "Survivor" joined the crowd to encourage them to keep up the fight against the further degradation of California's education system. The Contra Costa County superintendent of schools, the president of Diablo Valley College, a St. Mary's College basketball star and a high school student body president also addressed the crowd with personal anecdotes and calls to political action.

On a table to one side of the quad, the Contra Costa County Parent Teacher Association laid out packets of pre-written letters for attendees to sign. The letters – one of which was addressed to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger – implored lawmakers to consider how their decisions translate to the reality of a broken education establishment, from kindergarten through college.

Fifteenth District Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan begged the audience to keep drawing attention to the dire straits of California's schools even during summer break.

"We're in the biggest battle we've ever been in," said Buchanan. "You have to keep this up."

For information about the California Parent Teacher Association, including instructions on how to get in touch with legislators and how to organize a rally, go to www.capta.org.