Arnold put on his Reformer face today
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appears to have multiple personalities. Today Arnold the Reformer showed up again as he railed at the state of our budget and offered a few good ideas, according to the Sacramento Bee:
- Making school textbooks available in digital formats, freeing “hundreds of millions of dollars that could be used to hire teaches and reduce class sizes.”
- Using privately run correctional facilities as part of an effort to reduce the cost of prisons.
- Giving local governments more opportunity to run things without interference from Sacramento.
- Giving school districts more flexibility “and not tie their hands with strict rules like who is allowed to mow the lawn or fix the roof or do the plumbing.”
- Schwarzenegger also repeated his earlier calls for the abolition of some state boards and commissions, which he called “redundant,” and selling off some state property.
Great ideas Arnold. Good luck getting our lame Democratic and Republican State Legislators to back any of this…
Click here to watch the video of Schwarzenegger’s speech.
Arnold has also proposed a number of huge budget cuts:
- Those range from cutting spending on K-12 schools, community colleges, the University of California;
- Releasing some non-violent prisoners a year early;
- Closing 80 percent of the state’s parks, and
- Wiping out or paring back on health and social service programs for California’s neediest residents.
“He’s back” …
On LAT: http://www.reason.com/news/show/133890.html
I just don’t understand the digital format textbooks. We have so many students in our district who do not have computer access and so many classrooms with only one computer. How would these students access the textbook? Wouldn’t this create Williams Act violations?
tmare,
I think that the digital textbooks are for college level students.
2 & 3 – Chad Hammitt is a big proponent of digital textbooks. Apparently, his children attend schools where digital textbooks are the norm. However, in our district it is totally unrealistic. Unless all of our students have their own personal computers and internet access at home, it will never happen.
But it sounds good to the public.
CALIFORNIANS ARE A JOKE!
We elect a moviestar (a bad one at that) because two loud mouth radio hounds, a millionare and a weird idealist, say so.
He f&%ks up the state EVEN worse and we wonder why.
Digital text books??? Follow the money folks, this is good money after bad.
Closing State parks?? THIS IS LESS THAN 1% of the general fund. WTF
EVERY PERSON IN CALIFORNIA WHO VOTED FOR ARNOLD NEEDS TO LOOK IN THE MIRROR AND ASK “WHAT HAVE I DONE??”
Then and only then, can we bitch about higher taxes fees and digital textbooks.
An Uninformed media driven electorate has brought us here.
I’m still confused about the digital textbooks. If this is intended for college students only, my question is how much would it really save. I’ve always been under the impression that college textbooks are mostly paid for by the students (and thus, the over $100 cost per textbook). How does this save the state money if they are not talking about K-12 education? Someone, enlighten me.
duplojohn, I could not agree more. Bravo.