Brown's revised budget plan offers more money for schools

http://www.insidebayarea.com/california-budget/ci_23240512/governor-jerry-browns-revised-budget-plan-offers-more

California schools would get $1 billion more than proposed in January to enact stringent new "common core" academic standards, plus almost a quarter-billion dollars more as part of his education-funding overhaul, under a revised but still-tight budget proposal Gov. Jerry Brown released Tuesday.

The added K-12 funding is made possible by a cash windfall of almost $4.6 billion that the state has enjoyed in the first 10 months of this fiscal year, mostly due to better-than-expected personal income tax revenue. Proposition 98, an education funding measure passed by voters in 1988, requires that a significant chunk of that money go to schools.

But the May revision also includes a downward shift in the short-term economic outlook because the federal government did not extend the partial payroll-tax "holiday" that was in place for 2011 and 2012. That means forecasted personal income growth in 2013 has been almost halved, from 4.3 percent to 2.2 percent. That fact, coupled with the federal budget sequester, calls for renewed fiscal caution in California, the budget proposal says.