The funds for education in California has been cut year after year, and it has been stripped to bare necessity. Currently,  California education is operating at the bottom end of the national level fund wise. This year, if the budgets cuts goes unnoticed and unprotested, we may have our children studying in jam packed classroom with bare necessity academic programs. If you have a GATE children or special needs children, you can pretty much forget about getting much deserved services. In Oceanside where we live, only decent arts and performance program is a music program for 4th and 5th grades, which might be taken away if this budget cuts go unprotested. Children are our future, but they are put to the last of the priority list in California. This is very wrong. I would like to alarm all the concerned parent to stand up for their children's sake and protest against this budget cuts.
 
When I was an elementary student (which is many decades ago), we used to have a dedicated science room, an arts and crafts room, a music room equipped with all the music instruments one can imagine, a swimming pool, an auditorium with table tennis sets, basketball/volleyball court, and equipments for gymnastics such as balance bar, jumping box, mats, and etc., a large field and track court, a broadcasting room, a meeting room, a huge library, and each student had his/her shoes locker. The principal room was like a corporate president's room and every teacher had his/her desk in the large teacher's room.  Our curriculum included music, arts and crafts, and science throughout the 6 years of elementary. 4th, 5th, and 6th grade received arts, music, science, and cooking courses in the designated rooms, and were able to join after school clubs such as art club, newspaper club, chorus club, orchestra club, fields and track club, badminton club, and etc. At 5th grade, a foreign language class was added (language was English). We used to have a large sports festival and arts and performance festival once a year. Higher grades would have a school trip to outside their region for a couple of days.

Recently, I made an online research on Japanese public elementary schools, and found out that many elementary schools now even carry brass band or marching band of their own and participate in the regional and national contest as well.

Elementary schools in the overpopulated Tokyo is able to provide their children and teachers with spacious facilities because they build a multiple story buildings and afford single-subject educators for music, physical education, and arts, which means the affluent funds from the government.

Californian adults live multiple time richer life than that of Tokyo adults, yet our children are subjected to minimal education.

If the overpopulated nation can do it in such a limited land space, Californian should be able to do it better. Californian teachers, students, and parents should be  very upset with the lack of support for education by their government.

Please write a letter to the governor if you agree with me.
Here is a page you can find more about this issue and find a direct link to the governor's email: http://www.protectourstudents.org/