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The EdTrust-West Responds to the Final State Budget for 2022-2023
07/01/2022
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For Immediate Release
May 13, 2022
Contact:
Mariel Matze, [email protected]
Oakland, CA — Dr. Christopher J. Nellum, Executive Director of The EdTrust-West, issued the following statement in response to Governor Newsom’s Budget Revision for 2022-2023:
California, by rhetoric and reputation, is known as proudly progressive, but it still has work to do when it comes to realizing those values in the lives of its residents of color. Each year’s budget presents the state and its decision-makers with a crucial opportunity to live up to those values through their actions. More than two years in, students, families, and educators are coping with the academic, economic, physical and mental health challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. And while no Californian has been spared, those already shut out from opportunity have shouldered the heaviest burdens on all counts. The moment is historic; the state’s tremendous surplus represents an opportunity to meet it with a similarly historic transformation of our education systems.
Governor Newsom’s budget revision embodies that transformative spirit in several important ways, yet it doesn’t yet embody a reimagining of our broken education systems that the moment requires. We agree with the Governor that systemic change is necessary; however, to accomplish it, we must do a better job of supporting the students who are most in need. As the administration and the Legislature work toward a final budget over the coming weeks, we hope they remember that the early learning and care system, schools, colleges, and universities must put the students who are furthest from opportunity first. And California’s students of color, those from lower income households, and English Learners cannot afford for us to waste this historic opportunity.
Dr. Nellum is available for further comment if needed.
Please contact Mariel Matze at 650-380-1973.
About The EdTrust-West
The EdTrust-West works for educational justice and the high academic achievement of all students at all levels, pre-K through college, in the state of California. We expose opportunity and achievement gaps that separate students of color and low-income students from other youth, and we identify and advocate for the strategies that will forever close those gaps.
