But if they don’t put reversing the decline of public education as the highest priority, their efforts to bolster the economy by creating jobs are doomed to fail.

If we want a preview of what comes when public education goes into a death spiral, just look south.  After years of economic crisis, the once-vaunted University of California college system, formerly among the world’s most envied, has lost appeal, with many high school counselors now advising high-achieving, college-bound graduates against applying there, due to declining quality from lack of funding.

The implications are obvious: brain drain/fewer college students coming to the state → a reduced pipeline of well-prepared young workers for the labor market → less interest from businesspeople in locating or expanding in the state → reluctance of smart people to move to places where schools are subpar = no way out of economic malaise.

Oregon schools are in crisis.  And in crisis situations, you often see the best of people.  We’re seeing that here in our rural Oregon town, a place that cares deeply about our schools and students.

People are doing everything humanly possible to maintain school quality despite year after year of declining funding, resulting from a perfect storm of untenable PERS increases, enrollment declines and the depressed economy.  Our district’s budget has been decimated over the past three years, with $1.7 million cut from a $12 million budget since 2010, and another $1 million in cuts projected for school year 2012-13.  Yet we can consider ourselves lucky, since unlike other districts, we have a Local Option that funds about 10 percent of our operating costs.  (Redmond schools face the terrible prospect of cutting 11 more days from the school calendar to balance their budget, bringing the total to 20 lost school days this year and next, to give one regional example.)

One manifestation of how people are being asked to step up and help out is the number of requests for private money and unpaid help to preserve programs.  Here’s a sampling from the Nugget, our town weekly, of pleas for our big-hearted, open-palmed community to stand up in support of our schools (and this was a light week).

1.  A cleanup day, when 170 volunteers will be needed to paint, landscape, remove litter and spread wood chips at three schools.

2.  A benefit to raise money for scholarships for Hispanic college-bound seniors.

3.  A golf tournament to raise money for school sports programs.

4.  A volunteer fair to connect people with tasks going undone at local schools and other non-profits.

5.  A fun run for school funding.

In addition, I have knowledge of (and there are no doubt others) seven large grant applications for school-related activities in progress, with a total “ask” of about three-quarters of a million dollars.  If this private foundation money comes to fruition, it would prospectively save our high school’s college placement services, connect career-related learning to classrooms and school activities, help fund sports teams, pay for school-to-work transition counseling for graduating seniors, assist low-income families with after-school activities for their kids, and fund an ESD study on what can be done to improve the number of graduates continuing on to higher ed.

In Sisters, everyone is sacrificing—teachers, parents, classified staff, administrators, businesspeople, school volunteers, voters—to do what we can to save essential school programs.  But after years of scraping by, donor fatigue has set in.  Businesses have had enough of donation requests.  Volunteers are maxed out.  Teachers and staff are wondering how long they can go on doing more with (and for) less.

What’s the answer?

Private funding solutions are at best a stop-gap, temporary measure.  Volunteers are wonderful and essential, but we must have high-caliber professionals—and enough of them–at the helm in classrooms.

As with all Oregon public employers, our district has been hit with a huge increase in PERS payments: the increase alone is equal to about 5 percent of school revenues last year.  School funding hasn’t kept up with the PERS obligations imposed by the state on districts, nor have education funding levels increased in actual terms.

It’s not an option to count on short-term grants, fundraisers and volunteerism to assure that our nation has an educated populace ready to compete in a global economy.

It’s not an option to burn out teachers and school staff by cutting staff and paychecks and loading up those who remain with unmanageable work loads year after year .

It’s not an option to maintain educational quality over the long run with a system that is starved of adequate funding.

The only option for saving our public education system is to galvanize public opinion and force the political leadership to match school funding with actual needs and costs.  That likely means addressing the PERS debacle.  If we can’t find the political will to fix public schools, you can forget about creating decent, living wage jobs to fill with a large cadre of well-prepared citizens.

Read the Editorial in The Oregonian, “Oregon schools in crisis, again: What do candidates plan to do about it?“