Two weeks in the past, I dropped my 3-year-olds off at college for the primary time. It was a contented day — till I realized that the California state Meeting was planning to intestine an important program designed to maintain children like mine protected within the classroom.
CalSHAPE, or the California Faculties Wholesome Air, Plumbing, and Effectivity Program, helps colleges enhance air high quality and cooling. Many of those programs are dangerously outdated and even lacking solely in colleges throughout the state. Upgrades assist shield our youngsters from excessive warmth, indoor air air pollution, wildfire smoke and viruses resembling COVID. However regardless of the worsening results of local weather change, the Meeting has provide you with a plan that will remove the little funding we now have to make colleges safer — below the pretense of reducing Californians’ utility payments.
Opponents of Meeting Invoice 3121, together with the Pure Sources Protection Council, say it could, on common, give electrical prospects a one-time credit score of simply over $20 on a single invoice. That may’t be value sacrificing college students’ well being.
So why is that this plan even on the desk? Some legislators declare it addresses excessive electrical energy costs. However this can be a low cost political gimmick, not an answer.
Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Irvine), who sponsored the invoice, seems to have purchased into utilities’ false claims that small packages resembling CalSHAPE are driving rising electrical energy prices. It is a distraction, geared toward turning lawmakers’ consideration away from actual issues, resembling extra utility income.
In 2023, PG&E raked in $2.2 billion in income, a 25% enhance from 2022. Within the second quarter of 2024, income had been 28% greater than a yr earlier. The corporate has additionally introduced plans to spend $900 million to purchase the headquarters it moved to after finalizing its chapter reorganization. Final yr, San Diego Fuel & Electrical introduced in virtually $1 billion in income. And Edison Worldwide — the father or mother firm of Southern California Edison — reported $1.2 billion in web earnings in 2023, practically double the earlier yr. All whereas Californians are struggling to pay their electrical energy payments.
Final yr’s utility income had been virtually 20 instances greater than the funds remaining in CalSHAPE. But the Meeting desires to chop this wholesome colleges program to supply virtually imperceptibly low one-time invoice credit reasonably than exploring different concepts resembling utilizing lower-cost financing to chop utility income on infrastructure investments — a proposal that was deserted after utility firm opposition.
CalSHAPE isn’t costing anybody cash now — its funds had been collected from previous utility payments. California colleges have already submitted functions for many of the $250 million left in this system. Legislators ought to let colleges have the cash that was meant for them, reasonably than clawing it again on the final minute.
Santa Barbara Unified Faculty District, the place my children will begin kindergarten in a couple of years, was anticipating $6 million in essential upgrades via CalSHAPE. And Tustin Unified, which is represented by Petrie-Norris, would lose greater than $4 million in potential faculty funding if this plan passes.
Some assume colleges which have already utilized will nonetheless get the funding if this invoice turns into regulation, however the language shouldn’t be clear. And if candidates get the {dollars} they deserve, it makes eliminating this system much more of a gimmick, ensuing, by my greatest guess, in about $3 again per ratepayer.
This model of the invoice — launched after 10 p.m. Wednesday evening, when many Californians had been asleep — additionally cuts funding for photo voltaic on reasonably priced housing and clear vitality era and storage. The legislators could nicely have launched their plan on the final minute as a result of they realize it’s wildly unpopular. A broad coalition with a number of labor unions, together with the United Steelworkers District 12 and California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO, submitted a letter earlier this month opposing the concept. Bettering our college buildings not solely advantages scholar well being; it additionally creates good-paying jobs for Californians.
CalSHAPE additionally protects our lecturers from air pollution, which is why the California Federation of Academics, California Academics Assn., California Faculty Staff Assn. and Service Staff Worldwide Union have all opposed this proposal. Faculty staff shouldn’t should breathe unhealthy air within the office.
Make no mistake, California is dealing with a utility affordability disaster. Charges have risen far too shortly in recent times. However to decrease payments, policymakers should deal with the precise drivers of elevated prices, reasonably than launching a raid on faculty funding or diminishing packages that carry rooftop photo voltaic to communities which have been left behind.
The charges disaster in California can’t be solved with a political stunt. It should require progressive options and higher regulation of monopoly utilities. What the legislature is proposing is like placing a Band-Support on a wound that wants stitches. And our college students and lecturers would be the ones who are suffering. When the Meeting and Senate collect on Saturday, legislators ought to stand by California’s children and vote down AB 3121.
Leah C. Stokes is an affiliate professor at UC Santa Barbara, a senior coverage counsel at Rewiring America and host of the podcast “A Matter of Levels.” @leahstokes
