The hyper-politicization of California’s public schools over the last half-century matches up almost exactly with the decline in educational achievement of its students.

Just coincidence or cause and effect? Take your pick. However, it’s demonstrably true that school districts have become arenas for ceaseless conflicts over ideology, pedagogical theory, power and money that have overshadowed their existential purpose of preparing children for adulthood.

Examples abound but none more obvious than the district in the epicenter of California politics, Sacramento City Unified.

The district has flirted with insolvency for years because of its chronic tendency to spend more money than it receives in revenue from the state and local taxpayers. It’s the direct result of having a school board whose members are beholden to the Sacramento City Teachers Association.

That’s not an observation. The SCTA is proud of it, boasting on its website after 2024 school board elections that it “flexed its powerful organizing and political muscles” to get four of its candidates elected, “meaning that every current member of the SCUSD school is now supported by local educators who worked hard to make their successful elections a reality.”

More red ink

Having a union-dominated school board did not, of course, improve its finances. If anything the district’s budget became even more immersed in red ink as outgo increased and income languished, largely due to declines in enrollment and attendance, upon which state aid is calculated. Sacramento City Unified has room for more than 50,000 students, but enrollment has declined from over 41,000 kids to about 36,000 in the last 10 years.

Its current crisis exemplifies its perpetual dilemma. It is projected to run out of cash by next spring, and the district proposes to avoid insolvency with a $98 million plan that includes shifting $68 million from its retiree health care trust fund.

Luz Cázares, a fiscal adviser appointed by Sacramento County schools superintendent David Gordon, opposes the plan on the completely logical grounds that it would merely postpone the day of reckoning. Gordon and Michael Fine, chief executive of the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance team, agree with her.

Gordon and Fine are providing adults-in-the-room oversight that is fundamental to their offices but, of course, the district’s administration, its board of trustees and its unions resent being compelled to stop playing games. They have appealed to Tony Thurmond, the state superintendent of schools, to countermand Gordon and Fine.

Thurmond supports the district, although has not yet formally acted. The state association of county school superintendents briefly tried to persuade the Legislature, during the final hours of its biennial session which ended on Monday, to block Thurmond, but the effort failed. That was not surprising, given the power that the California Teachers Association, which backs its Sacramento affiliate, wields in the Capitol.

Courting the unions

Neither is it surprising that Thurmond might interject himself. He is a former legislator, not an educator, who was elected with union support eight years ago, mounted a brief campaign for governor this year and will be out of a job in four months when his term ends. Thurmond will be seeking a new job in January and, one might surmise, supporting the union position in the squabble could help him find one.

If Sacramento City Unified’s crisis cannot be resolved locally, the district may be compelled – as other troubled urban districts have experienced – to seek a state bailout, which would also mean the state would appoint an overseer to manage its finances.

Given its stubborn refusal to mend its financial ways, having an independent manager might be the best thing not only for the district but for the thousands of students who have been pawns in the games adults play.

Dan Walters is one of most decorated and widely syndicated columnists in California history, authoring a column four times a week that offers his view and analysis of the state’s political, economic,...