Although the Lodi Unified School District passed a budget for next year by using $7.7 million in State Fiscal Stabilization Funding from the federal government, what will happen in future years as California’s financial crisis grows is unclear---and frightening. [Lodi Unified Passes $246 Million Budget, by Jennifer Bonnet, Lodi News-Sentinel, June 16, 2009]

The deep and ongoing cuts in California’s education funding are an assault on what was once the most progressive system in the country.

Exactly 160 years ago, Robert Semple, the president of the California Constitutional Convention, said: “If the people are to govern themselves, they should be qualified to do it. They must be educated, they must educate their children; they must provide means for the diffusion of knowledge and the progress of enlightened principles.â€