California Teachers Clan

John Mockler

John Mockler, a longtime and well-respected skillful on California educational activity policy and finance who wrote the schoolhouse funding law Suggestion 98, died Tuesday in Sacramento of pancreatic cancer. He was 73.

"John knew didactics constabulary similar no 1 else and was able to put schoolhouse finance on solid footing that endures fifty-fifty today," Gov. Jerry Brown said in a argument. "He was also a dandy human existence who I volition securely miss."

Mockler held a number of elevation positions in California pedagogy and politics during his lengthy career. He served as executive director of the State Lath of Education, was education secretary under former Gov. Gray Davis, and served as pinnacle education aide to Willie Brownish when Brown was Speaker of the Assembly. Mockler was as well a longtime fellow member of the EdSource Board of Directors and founded an educational consulting firm, Mockler and Associates, in Sacramento.

One of his most lasting impacts on California education policy is authoring Proposition 98. The voter initiative, approved in 1988, sets guaranteed minimum funding levels for didactics in California. Mockler used to joke that he fabricated the law intentionally confusing so that country officials would have to hire him to interpret it, according to an obituary in The Sacramento Bee.

"In the cabalistic world of instruction funding, John Mockler is the Oracle," Capitol Weekly wrote in a 2009 article listing Mockler No. 83 on its listing of California'south top 100 "power brokers."  "(California political commentator) Joe Matthews once joked the Legislature should introduce a Constitutional amendment that Mockler must live forever, lest there be nobody left who understands Proffer 98. … Since education funding is implicated in every budget conclusion, Mockler is still a part of any change on revenue enhancement policy or spending reductions in the Capitol."

"His name is legend, over and over once more," said Ken Hall, president of the EdSource board of directors and founder of School Services of California, a financial, direction and policy organization for school districts. Mockler fabricated enduring contributions to educational policy, Hall said.

While education secretary and executive director of the state board, Mockler "helped create new standards, adopt new textbooks, better instructor professional development and impose more than accountability on public school operations," California State Librarian and longtime friend Greg Lucas wrote in an obituary in Capitol Weekly.

Colleagues remembered Mockler for his quick wit, abrupt intellect and no-nonsense approach, specially for those he felt had wrong-headed ideas about schools.

"He could count on the fact that he was right and you were wrong," said Lawrence Picus, professor at the USC Rossier Schoolhouse of Education and a schoolhouse finance expert who knew Mockler for 30 years.

Proposition 98 has been criticized over the years because information technology ready funding for education based on a circuitous formula tied to fluctuating state revenues and not on student needs or adequate funding levels. Only Picus said the mensurate was intended to be a floor, not a ceiling on education funding, and it'due south important to remember the context of the times. When the ballot measure was written in 1988, lawmakers were because using country lottery proceeds to cut other sources of country educational activity funding. Prop. 98 was put before voters to prevent them from doing that, he said.

State Board of Education member and quondam EdSource Executive Director Trish Williams, who worked with Mockler for most 2 decades during his time on the EdSource lath, said Mockler was "both a patient mentor and a tough schoolmaster when it came to staff agreement the cabalistic intricacies of California's school finance law."

"He oftentimes drove me crazy with his vigilance but just as ofttimes made me laugh out loud with his wit and blunt candor," she said.

State Board of Instruction member Carl Cohn, as well an EdSource board member, said, "He was a great storyteller and could talk virtually governors and members of the Legislature. I'm sort of a political junkie so it was bully to be around someone like that."

Mockler had "an interesting way of coining phrases," Cohn recalled, including what Mockler called the " 'California schools suck manufacture,' or 'people who make their living manus-wringing about how bad California schools are,' when in fact a lot of progress had been fabricated in John's view, especially with African-Americans and Latinos in the final decade or and so. I will forever be grateful to him for that."

Mockler was born in Chicago, grew upwardly in San Diego and earned a bachelor's degree from UC Santa Barbara. He is survived by his life partner, Ballad Farris, 2 children and five grandchildren, co-ordinate to The Bee.

Mockler's "razor precipitous wit was matched by his encyclopedic institutional history of California public education," said Kelvin Lee, a longtime EdSource lath member and erstwhile superintendent of Dry Creek Joint Uncomplicated School Commune in Roseville.

"He always had a kind word and twinkle in his unashamed Irish optics," Lee said in an email. "I have lost a wonderful friend but not his endearing presence."

Staff writers Susan Frey and Smita Patel contributed to this study.

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