Run that by me one more time.

In this Great Recession, voters say they want to increase their taxes to fund public schools? This may come as a surprise to some. However, the recent USC/Los Angeles Times poll indicating a majority of California voters favor increasing taxes to fund public schools confirms what the California State PTA has been hearing loudly and clearly from parents: Cuts to schools have been too deep.

It is time to act on this consensus.

The California State PTA supports a proposed initiative for the November 2012 statewide ballot – The Our Children, Our Future: Local Schools and Early Education Investment Act. It is sponsored by the Advancement Project, a nonprofit civil rights and public policy group.

We know there may be other measures on the ballot calling for broader tax increases or state budget reforms.

The Our Children, Our Future Act is the boldest because it raises $10 billion exclusively for K-12 schools, including charter schools, and early childhood education.

Our goal is to move past partisan debate and issues that may divide us and provide our children with programs that people on the political left, right and center agree are essential to a complete education.

The Our Children, Our Future Act allows us all to unite around the one thing we know for sure – the majority of Californians agree that schools need more funding.

This measure would:

• Raise billions of dollars in new revenues to help restore programs, including instruction in the arts, physical education, science, technology and engineering; reduce class sizes, and add more counselors, librarians and nurses.

• Ensure local control by allocating the money on a per-student basis to be spent directly in schools.

• Help close the achievement gap by providing additional per-student funding to support disadvantaged children and English language learners, as well as allocating 15 percent of the revenue for early childhood education and preschool programs, measures that are proven to help close the gap.

• Generate the needed additional revenues through a sliding-scale increase in the personal income tax, which would be equitable, broad-based and ensure highest earners contribute the most.

In our latest annual survey, PTA members throughout the state identified adequate state funding for education as a resounding priority: 98.6 percent said it was important or extremely important.

No other issue came close to this level of support.

Parents report many crucial programs have been severely cut or eliminated, including arts education, summer school, school libraries and media centers, school bus transportation, physical education and sports.

You can find highlights from the survey on our home page – www.capta.org – under "What's New."

While folks in Sacramento and Washington may debate the reform of the week, the most urgent crisis facing California schools is that they simply don't have the resources to provide the education our children need.

Decisions on which child has access to a complete education should not be determined by ZIP code or the depth of one's pocket or even a community's ability to raise money or assess a local tax. This is the right of every child, and it is our responsibility to make this happen.

We all have read the headlines: More than $20 billion has been cut from our local schools.

According to the California Budget Project, California's education spending is near the bottom in the nation.

California ranked 47th in education spending as a percentage of personal income – a measure that reflects the size of a state's economy and the resources available to support public services.

California has the largest average class size and the fewest librarians per student.

We are 49th in the nation when it comes to guidance counselors. California's schools averaged 810 students for each guidance counselor in 2009-10 while the rest of the nation averaged 433 students per guidance counselor.

Mothers and fathers and grandparents and neighbors know what this means: Their children, our children, may be the first generation of children in America to be less educated than their parents.

We cannot let this happen.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once spoke about the fierce urgency of now.

Right now we have an important decision to make. We can argue about how to tweak the system, or we can join together to do what we know must be done immediately – invest in education programs that all children need and deserve.

Now, more than ever, the children of California need us to come together and act on their behalf.

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Carol Kocivar is president of the California State PTA.

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