Power is stripped from state schools superintendents in major education overhaul

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Set us as preferred The just-approved state budget strips authority from the elected state superintendent of public instruction, transferring power in January to an appointee of the governor, dramatically changing the oversight and management of a public school system serving more than 6 million students from preschool through 12th grade.The change was pushed through by Gov.

Gavin Newsom at the urging of academics and education reformers who have long criticized how the state’s $149 billion public education system is governed.In essence, the change consolidates increased power within the governor’s office — streamlining and largely replacing a diffuse system in which the state superintendent has significant influence, but no direct control over budget and policy.Supporters hail the move as bringing accountability and coherence — through the governor — to all the departments and agenices involved in education.

“The approval of education governance reform, over a century in the making, is a monumental victory for California’s students that finally establishes a sensible system to best support them,” said Ted Lempert, president of Children Now, an Oakland-based research and advocacy organization.“We commend Governor Newsom for his leadership in making this much needed change a reality.”Critics called the change an unjustified, undemocratic side-stepping of the state constitution and the will of voters.“California’s constitutional architecture deliberately established an independent schools chief to ensure that public education answers directly to the voters,” wrote a labor coalition that included the two largest statewide teacher unions.

“Replacing an elected constitutional officer with a partisan bureaucrat serving strictly at the pleasure of the executive branch breaks that model, permanently mutin...