Education is the topic of the year almost everywhere, especially in California, where voters will decide whether to ease the requirements for school bonds and start a statewide voucher system. The strains on the system are most clear in the classroom, especially in cities. Donal Brown taught in California public schools for 35 years and is currently a reporter for the Pacific News Service covering Africa.

California is worried about its schools, and not without reason. Once a proud leader in the field, the state has basically defunded education.

With a growing population, this has produced a massive teacher shortage -- a need for 260,000 to 300,000 new teachers by 2010.

Governor Gray Davis recently signed a $2.4 billion package designed to address the situation. It includes much-needed improvements in starting salaries and cash incentives to teach in low-performing schools. Even with these new funds, California remains in the bottom one-third nationally in funding for schools.

Cash incentives and housing subsidies will help attract teachers to city schools -- the suburbs have little trouble drawing candidates -- but they will not suffice to keep teachers in classrooms over the long run. We need a more comprehensive plan that supports schools and teachers at every level.

Tauheedah Rashid's story provides an excellent illustration.

Armed with a degree from Yale University, Rashid, 22, started teaching a sixth grade class at Montera Middle School in Oakland, California last January.

The previous teacher, also in her first year, quit in mid-semester because she could not control the students. Between her departure and Rashid's arrival, the class saw a total of 15 different substitutes and had done no homework.

Rashid says she was not discouraged by her students' poor writing or their learning problems, but took these as a challenge and made demands on the students -- starting with their classroom behavior. She also discovered she was expected to teach with books missing pages published in the 1970s.

Rashid says she succeeded in "getting the students out of the rafters." Despite this, at the end of the semester the administration made no attempt to keep her. Instead, the district cut the staff at her school leaving her with no job.

"There was no clear path for getting another position," says Rashid. "No one even called to give me an exit interview."

It is true that school administrators are pressed from many sides these days. Safety is a far greater concern than ever before. School personnel are expected to deal with a wide range of students' health and emotional needs.

At the same time, there is growing emphasis on "performance" -- with schools rated on the basis of students' test scores.

These myriad concerns make it easy to forget the teachers. But teachers must be asked what they need to succeed, even at the basic level of books and supplies -- and then get that support.

Above all, teachers should not be asked to face students hostile to learning. Students who enter kindergarten with no learning skills tend to settle in as bottom feeders and resist education for their entire school careers. To make children ready for school, California should make high-quality daycare programs and nursery schools available to every child.