There are two reasons. Almost because of its wealth, California has a hard time paying for public school teachers. At 5.7 per cent, the cost of living is one of the highest in the country. Even though teachers' salaries are near the top of the national average, most teachers find it difficult to afford to buy a home in cities such as San Francisco or Los Angeles.

California has a structural imbalance in its budget, or, more simply, it spends more than it earns, said Jennifer Kuhn, an education analyst with the Legislative Analyst's Office in the state capital, Sacramento.

"So much goes into preserving existing services each year with education, jails, infrastructure, etc, that once there is a downturn in the economy - and a spike in gas prices - it makes it difficult to balance the budget," Kuhn said.

The Californian Government is also saddled with costs that other states do not have, said Michael Kirst, professor emeritus of education at Stanford University.

These include its own health care program, Medi-Cal, designed to top up the Federal Government-sponsored scheme, Medicaid, and programs to help fund housing for low-income families.

"It's a very high cost place to do business, so we need high salaries to lure people to work in California," Kirst said.

To make matters more difficult, the state has a complicated formula for funding public education, which relies not only on business and personal taxes, but on property taxes levied on home-owners.

Property taxes are roughly 1 per cent of the price of the house when it is sold and this figure rises at a marginal rate of only 2 per cent inflation each year.

So as the house appreciates in value the property tax remains relatively low. In other states this pool of money from property tax rises each year as the value of people's homes appreciates, Kirst said.

Because of the mortgage meltdown in California, there is less revenue from property taxes across the state as homes remain on the market for longer and sell for less.

Putting all of this together leaves Californian students and parents stuck in a vicious cycle of decreased programs, where the bulk of budget cuts falling on the poorest students. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Government is also planning on cutting state preschools and programs that offer free dental, nutrition and mental health services for children.

Set against a national backdrop, Californian ranks last on the teacher/child ratio school, meaning children there receive less time with their teachers than children in any other state. For kindergarten to year 3 the ratio is 20 students to one teacher, which is close to the national average, but for grades 4-9 it jumps to 29 students a teacher.

The California Teachers Association said that as schools broke up for the northern summer at the end of May, thousands of teachers and support staff across the state were fired because their schools could not predict funding for 2008-09.

During this time, other states took advantage of this excess of teachers and held job fairs in San Francisco and Los Angeles to entice teachers and their families to move interstate. The teachers' union has no way of knowing how many teachers it lost during this time.

For school districts such as Pacifica, which looks after 3000 students in seven schools, the only way to make up for the budget shortfall of $US1 million was to turn to the voters and campaign to raise local property taxes.

And this is what we did earlier this year. Faced with the prospect of yet again cutting a meagre budget, a group of mothers and fathers campaigned to convince voters to go the polls to add a further $US96 a year to their property tax bill.

After six months of fund-raisers, phone-banking sessions and mail-outs, the proposal passed by the slimmest of margins possible, the exact number of votes needed.

So we get to keep watering our playing fields throughout the dry, Sydney-like Californian summer, we will keep our summer school programs and we won't fire the cleaning staff.

But I will still be expected to volunteer in my daughter's classroom when she starts kindergarten.

Of course, I won't begrudge her my time and enthusiasm. But it is the fact that I am picking up the slack for Arnie that really gets me.