First to Worst explores the roots of California’s current education crisis, tracing it to the anti-tax movement of the 1970’s and 80’s and to civil rights lawsuits that aimed to equalize school spending but resulted instead in disastrous funding limits on schools. “We really wrote off adequacy and embraced equalized mediocrity,” says Michael Kirst of Stanford University.
First to Worst pays special attention to Proposition 13, the 1978 anti-tax law (still in effect) that froze property taxes on businesses and homes and, critics say, cut funding for public schools off at the knees. “We’re always on a survival level,” Harriet McLean, a principal in Contra Costa, explains in FIRST TO WORST. “We’re understaffed, we’re over-crowded, and our roof leaks.” McLean takes viewers on a tour of her school, which is typical of appalling conditions found in many schools throughout the state.
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