Arnold doesn't deserve a second term

By: Katy Goodwin

Posted: 10/17/05

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced in September that he will run for a second term in November of 2006. Judging by the awful decisions he has made so far, voting in Schwarzenegger for another four years would be a terrible mistake. Schwarzenegger is an incompetent hypocrite and it would be embarrassing to see him re-elected.

When Schwarzenegger ran in the recall election in 2003, he promised Californians a socially-liberal and financially-conservative agenda. He said he supported equal rights for homosexual couples. Schwarzenegger lied.

He vetoed a bill Sept. 29 passed in both the state Assembly and the Senate that would have legalized gay marriage.

It looks like his comment about supporting equal rights was just a tactic used to con Democratic constituents into voting for him.

Socially liberal people are also concerned with their right to privacy, especially in matters such as abortion. It would be a violation of privacy to create a bill that mandates parental notification by the doctor 48 hours before a minor's scheduled abortion.

Proposition 73, an initiative backed by Schwarzenegger that will run on this November's special election ballot, would legalize this practice. Schwarzenegger has also committed far worse infractions against students and teachers.

We originally believed Schwarzenegger would help the California education system because of his prior involvement in promoting physical fitness and sports in schools in the early 1990s, as well as his successful creation of an after school initiative in 2002.

When Schwarzenegger ran in 2003, he ran on a platform of making education a top priority, leading many Californians to vote for him.

He promised he would restore funding to schools as was required by law in Proposition 98, a 17 year-old law that guarantees a minimum dollar amount of the budget funding to go towards California's public education system, including community colleges.

Instead, Schwarzenegger has once again proved his hypocrisy.

Last year, Schwarzenegger asked schools to cut $2.3 billion dollars of funding to balance the budget.

He promised to pay it back this year, but has not - and has said he isn't going to. Schwarzenegger has also written and supported Proposition 76, which would put him in complete control of budget spending as it relates to education, with no permission needed from the state legislature.

If passed, Proposition 76 would lower the minimum amount of money allocated to schools and eliminate the repayment requirement by the government. This means Schwarzenegger can tell us how much we get for school funding. It lets him skip repaying the schools if he takes money away like he did this year.

This means we at Palomar could face a tuition increase and program cuts because our school is not getting the government funding it needs to run. It also means more teacher layoffs which means less classes offered, which can lead to more unemployment.

Not only does he want to cut education funding, he also wants to make it more difficult for teachers to get the tenure and wages they deserve. Schwarzenegger has shown through Proposition 74 that he doesn't respect our teachers.

This law would extend a teacher's probationary status from the current two years to five years. It would also allow a teacher to be fired after only two consecutive evaluations in which the teacher's performance was deemed unsatisfactory.

Two evaluations are not enough to prove a teacher's ability to teach. The teacher could be going through a hard time or maybe their class is a difficult or new subject. Two evaluations is not nearly enough evidence that a teacher is doing so badly they should be fired.

Not only could they be fired, but the teacher would not be given the 90 day period they are currently allowed to improve their performance. This is incredibly harsh and leaves no room for the teacher to improve.

Hypocrisy is an unethical and despicable thing. As a leader, be it of a sports team or a state, you are held to a moral and ethical standard to which you are held.

Schwarzenegger doesn't measure up to this standard. When a person who holds financial and lawmaking power promises us something, we expect that person to follow through. So far, our governor has not done so.

Worse than that, his actions have proved to be doing the opposite of what he promised. Do we really want to re-elect a governor who continually breaks his promises and hurts our educational system?