As California students continue to lag behind pre-pandemic achievement levels, candidates vying to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom say that state bureaucracy is to blame for a lackluster education system in one of the most powerful economies in the world.

Teachers and elected officials agree: Education is being underfunded. Organizations such as the California Teachers Association and the California School Boards Association have each criticized Newsom and his administration for seeking to undermine Proposition 98, which guarantees a minimum funding level for K-14 education each year.

Five candidates spoke on state educational issues in a forum hosted by the California School Boards Association Wednesday at Sacramento’s SAFE Credit Union Convention Center, with four Democrats and one Republican alike taking turns whacking the state’s approach toward education, playing to a room largely made up of school elected officials who tend to favor local control and want to see the end of unfunded mandates for their districts.

How is the state is failing California students?

All five governor hopefuls agreed that the state is failing students and schools in several ways. First, the state does not provide stable and adequate funding for education, a problem that all five promised to solve by treating Prop. 98 like a “floor rather than a ceiling,” seeking to exceed, rather than only meet funding requirements set by the law.

“There was a purpose for Prop. 98 and that was to really ensure that we had a minimum guaranteed level of funding, and it should be the floor,” former state Controller Betty Yee said. “For me, this is about protecting the spirit and the law of Prop. 98.”

Candidates also said policymakers in Sacramento brew ideas without consideration of how implementing new requirements would affect local agencies across the state, particularly districts in rural areas that have fewer resources.

The state has passed several unfunded mandates during Newsom’s time in office, including a bill passed in 2021 which established ethnic studies as a graduation requirement, an effort now stalled due to a lack of state funds. Another law passed in 2023 requires all new school buses purchased by schools to be electric by 2035, which the California School Boards Association has vocally opposed.

‘Nobody’s listening’

“Mandates that require everyone to do the same thing are stupid,” said Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, to great applause. “You cannot have a mandate for education in, say, downtown Los Angeles that will have the same outcome or effect in rural Siskiyou County. It doesn’t work, and unless we start treating Californians like individual Californians with individual problems, we are going to be talking about the same thing four years from now.”

Not everyone supported doing away with mandates related to matters such as climate goals completely, but promised to do more to ensure that any mandate comes with funding and support from the state.

Lastly, multiple candidates criticized the level of accountability the state takes compared to school districts, which have a lot more to lose if they are deemed noncompliant with standards imposed by the state. Legislators need to keep up their end of the bargain by guaranteeing consistent funding and providing clear support for statewide initiatives, they said.

“The state doesn’t follow through on its promises and its commitments that it makes,” former Assemblymember Ian Calderone said. “I think a huge problem right now with the state government is that nobody’s listening… . If you don’t have accountability and a democratization of decision-making and power and partnerships with groups and individuals like yourself, you’re not going to have a successful state.”

CSBA will host another forum Thursday morning with candidates vying to lead the nation’s largest school system as the State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

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