Budget avoids teacher layoffs
Agreement comes as California sees troubling signs in coronavirus hospitalizations
As California struggles to manage the impact of the growing coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday announced a state budget deal that avoids deep education cuts to close a cavernous deficit created by the crisis.
Newsom offered few details in the deal hashed out with legislative leaders late Sunday, but he stressed that the most feared cuts to public schools that he’d called for to help close a $54.3 billion shortfall will be averted.
“We have provisions against teacher layoffs,” Newsom said Monday. “That is good news, that was foundational, something we all cared deeply about. There was concern and anxiety about layoffs and pink slips and that was substantially addressed.”
The budget news came as the toll of reopening more of the state’s economy is beginning to show in troubling signs of new infections and hospital stays. Over the past two weeks, the number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized rose by 16% and those in intensive care unit beds grew by 11%, Newsom said. The rate of COVID-19 tests returning positive results saw a slight uptick within the last week — from 4.5% to 4.8%.
“Those that would suggest we’re out of the woods, those that suggest that somehow (COVID-19) would disappear, these numbers tell a very, very different and sobering story,” Newsom said.
The coronavirus has killed more than 5,500 Californians and the shutdowns have put millions out of work, leaving state officials juggling the historic crisis on many fronts. Newsom last month was forced to rip up and remake the rosy budget he’d proposed in January, when the state was riding a national economic surge with a surplus of more than $6 billion as his and other states locked down schools and businesses to slow the spread of COVID-19.
The single biggest step Newsom had proposed toward closing the budget gap — $14 billion worth — was to come from cuts to K-12 schools and colleges and to state employee compensation that would be “triggered” unless the federal government doesn’t provide additional
aid beyond the $2 trillion stimulus in March.
But legislative leaders, teacher unions and school districts pushed back against assuming cuts to education. They argued teacher cuts would undermine schools’ efforts to reduce class size and provide social distancing to reduce the spread of COVID-19 when classes resume. Lawmakers proposed an alternative that would assume a federal rescue package will come and if it doesn’t, to deal with that problem then.
California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley said in a statement Monday that “through tough choices, a prudent agreement has been reached that prioritizes the continuity of education for the most diverse and most economically disadvantaged students in all of higher education.”
Meanwhile, the state is continuing to see troubling signs with the coronavirus, as it continues to reopen. This week, California hit its highest-ever seven-day average of new cases.
As of Monday, the state had confirmed more than 183,000 cases of COVID-19 — about a third of which were confirmed within the past two weeks, according to data compiled by this news organization.
The California Office of Emergency Services is working closely with 11 of the state’s 58 counties that are showing some alarming data trends — Fresno, Imperial, Kern, Kings, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernadino, San Joaquin, Santa Barbara, Stanislaus and Tulare.
Of particular note, an uptick in positive cases in Riverside and San Bernardino counties has been linked to community transmission and increased gatherings rather than congregate settings, such as state prisons and nursing homes, according to Mark Ghaly, secretary of California Health and Human Services. Both counties were among those that rescinded mandatory mask orders before Newsom imposed a statewide mandate last week.
While the Bay Area has taken a more cautious approach to reopening, San Francisco officials announced a plan Monday to reopen outdoor bars, hair salons and a number of other businesses at a faster pace than the state — the second county in the Bay Area to seek approval from the state to further relax its coronavirus restrictions. San Mateo County on Thursday allowed hair and nail salons, barbershops, gyms and restaurants to invite customers back inside.
“We know a lot of businesses and residents are struggling financially, and this next step will help get more San Franciscans back to work while still balancing safety,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said.
Despite a rise in hospitalizations and positive cases, Newsom said that the state is “in a position to absorb even greater impacts.” About three-quarters of the state’s intensive care unit beds are still available, as are tens of thousands of hospital beds, according to state data.
Newsom said that if the state sees “persistent problems” in certain areas, officials may “pull back a little bit” in terms of reopening. But unlike the sweeping statewide stay-at-home order he issued in mid-March, the governor said Monday that any decisions on putting restrictions back in place to slow the spread of the virus would be handled on a county-by-county basis moving forward.
“I want you to know we’re managing this,” Newsom said, “we’re focusing in a very deliberative way on addressing not only the mitigation but the reopening of the economy in which people are mixing.”