Public education in California is moving from crisis to catastrophe. In the last three years our K-12 schools and higher education institutions have seen their budgets cut by more than $20 billion. That's nearly $3,000 per K-12 student. Even with these cuts, California is facing a budget deficit this year of $25 billion.

The governor has proposed a budget that would keep K-12 funding stable, but that budget depends upon the extension of taxes temporarily put in place two years ago. Without that extension, K-12 funding may be facing another $5 billion in cuts next fall.

In the last three years, more than 40,000 California teachers, nurses, librarians, counselors and support staff have been laid off. This has resulted in higher class sizes and less support for our students. Many school districts have shortened the school year by five days. Another $5 billion in cuts will mean even more teachers and support staff will be laid off and the school year will be shortened even more, perhaps to as few as 150 days.

Just look at what some local districts are doing to prepare for this kind of budget. In Fontana the school board has voted to completely eliminate counselors. Imagine high schools that don't have counselors to help our students prepare for college admission, or even worse to assist students facing a personal crisis of some sort. Most districts in our area have increased class sizes. Where K-3 classes three years ago were at 20:1, it is now common to have a ratio of 30:1. In our middle and high schools it's not uncommon to have class size ratios over 40:1.

Schools in California have issued layoff notices to another 20,000 teachers this year. If the governor's budget is approved with the extension of the taxes he's seeking, many of those layoffs will be rescinded. What will happen if his budget isn't approved and schools face another $5 billion cut? The same number of students will be coming to school next year either way. If we lose another 20,000 teachers that means they will be going to classrooms even more crowded than they are now.

Even worse than the scenario I've painted so far is that many school districts will probably be forced into insolvency with a cut that big. We have districts in California that are already on the brink of bankruptcy. Fontana Unified is one of them.

The San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools has already appointed a retired school business official to help Fontana Unified deal with a very real financial problem. A further reduction of funding the size we may be facing here could very well push the district into bankruptcy.

They are unlikely to be alone.

We face a choice here in California. We can have a school system that will receive for the first time in three years about the same funding as the year before, or we can have a system that takes another huge hit pushing some districts into bankruptcy, and all of them into higher class sizes and fewer services for our students. Crisis or catastrophe. The choice is ours.

Rick McClure is a teacher and president of the Ontario-Montclair Teachers Association. He is a former board member of the Fontana Unified School District.