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Today, Governor Newsom announced key highlights for the State’s May budget revision in a press conference, and the #1 takeaway was the historic and long overdue  investments in public education.

The directive is clear. To meet the needs of students of color, we must reimagine and rebuild our schools. 

Californians for Justice is excited to see our youth efforts in organizing and advocating for investment in our Reimagine and Rebuild campaign reflected in the $3 billion investment in the California Community Schools Partnership Program, along with investments in teacher recruitment and retention pipeline and professional development, increase in LCFF funding, expanded learning time, mental health supports, and college funds for our most underserved  students. Full budget revisions are scheduled to be released this Friday, May 14. 

Why This Budget Announcement Matters

This is a historic opportunity in CA public education. #ICYMI, California public schools now have a record amount of state and federal funding, ~$34 billion, to help students and schools restart and recover from the pandemic. This is the largest increase in education funding in over 30 years for CA schools. And today’s budget announcement  underlines the critical importance of investing in our youth and communities for racial equity.

By investing $3 billion in the California Community Schools Partnership Program, we have the opportunity to take meaningful steps towards this long-term vision.

But we also know long-term visions require long-term commitment. We need to make sure we are building out the statewide infrastructure and capacity to support our schools in implementing these principles. To do that, we look forward to working with our state and local leaders to identify ways for the state of California to sustainably and continuously generate revenue for our schools.

— ICYMI —

After a year where our youth conducted an action research project, interviews, surveys with more than 1,000 of their peers — primarily youth of color– from across the state, we launched our Rebuild and Reimagine campaign, offering 6 key solutions to rebuild and reimagine racially just schools. 

Those solutions were also reflected in a platform to Reimagine and Rebuild CFJ and our partners released that detailed what education can look like for our students, a place where schools:

• Center relationships
• Address whole child needs
• Strengthen staffing and partnerships
• Make teaching and learning relevant and rigorous
• Empower teams to reimagine and rebuild systems