There's a move in Sacramento to fix the state's broken education system, not by throwing more money at the problem but by changing it.

Assemblymember Julia Brownley (D-Woodland Hills), whose district includes portions of Ventura County, introduced a pair of bills Wednesday to the California Assembly Education Committee, which she chairs. Assembly Bill 8 seeks to overhaul the state's outdated school finance system to make it simpler and more transparent. AB 487 authorizes school districts to sell surplus and obsolete instructional materials, saving warehouse costs and increasing school revenues.

The bills are small but important first steps toward streamlining the way our schools and classrooms are financed.

The current school budget battle appears on the surface to be a zero-sum game in which one program suffers at the expense of another. But it doesn't have to be that way. The kind of fundamental change Brownley proposes could feasibly lead to a net increase in the money available to our schools, even in times of shrinking budgets.

AB 8, for example, charges that the revenues given to school districts are not aligned with actual student or community needs. Districts are under strict orders on how to spend certain revenues; this is called categorical spending, and it's a system that creates high compliance costs and makes it difficult for local educators to allocate their scarce resources. The bill would examine alternative methods for financing California's 10,000 public schools and give the educators more flexibility to meet local needs.

AB 487 seeks to capitalize on the millions of dollars in educational materials—textbooks and equipment—that become obsolete each year and are put out to pasture. Don't just store the stuff or give it away, Brownley says—sell it and return the money to the schools. The idea seems to have merit.

There must be countless other ways to improve the shape of our classrooms, and not all require new spending.

It's no secret that budget cuts have officials at Simi Valley Unified School District scrambling to be frugal and save more, and that's a trend that doesn't require a state mandate.