• California will be among the first-round losers in the Race to the Top competition, but the second time will be a charm. The state will come up big in the summer.

• Congress (well, Nancy Pelosi) and the Obama administration will come to the state’s rescue again, with a subsidy of a few more billion dollars for K-12 and higher ed, as part of Stimulus II to ward off massive public employee layoffs. Then it will grant the state a waiver to cut K-12 spending below last year’s level, resulting in, of course, more pink slips.

• Republicans will will preach more local control but not one will vote to make it easier for local districts to tax themselves by making it easier to pass a parcel tax.

• The Ed Coalition, minus the California Teachers Association, will sue the state over its failure to fund adequately public education.

• California will finally nudge out Mississippi and Louisiana to be 50^th in Ed Week’s ranking in per pupil student spending.

Welcome to 2010, the year of doom.I know, we’re already six days into the new year. Making predictions now is like betting on the NCAA tournament once the round of 64 has started.

But the calendar in California officially doesn’t turn until the governor gives the state of the state speech, and that’s happening today. So I’m in under the wire.

Knowing that no one would ever think of throwing these predictions back in my face 359 days from now, let me elaborate:

Race to the Top: With all this last-minute scrambling and help from WestEd, the state will manage to throw something credible together. But the Obama administration will choose a handful of states whose reforms are far more impressive, and goad California to come up with something better in the second round. And it will, with more local unions signing on this time. And what will clinch the win for California will be Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s fascination with the monumental changes in Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second largest school district. The 30 schools that the school board has opened up to competing proposals by charter operators, community groups and union teachers will be perfect laboratories for Race to the Top. So will district’s charter-like pilot schools. But the feds’ enthusiasm will dim if United Teachers Los Angeles succeeds in blocking charters from the competition.

The budget:  A 15-round brawl will extend into September. K-12 and the community colleges will be all but knocked out. Dozens of districts will be added to the state’s financial watch list. A few may throw in the towel and let the state take them over.

Even with another Obama stimulus, the Legislature will be looking at billions of fresh cuts to K-12 schools and community colleges.

Any bets on what they’ll do to accommodate? Lop a week of the school year? Perhaps. Cancel summer school? Most have already. Thirty in a kindergarten class? Happening now. Eliminate high school AP classes with less than 30 in a class? Maybe.

Taxes. My fellow blogger and columnist Peter Schrag has outlined 10 reasonable steps the Legislature could take to get rid of a projected $20 billion deficit. They include rescinding tax credits that don’t produce jobs and broadening the sales tax on services. But Gov. Schwarzenegger won’t budge, and Tea Party conservatives have Republicans running scared in an election year.

Come November, parents and school advocates will finally connect the dots and join the movement for a constitutional convention to make big changes in the way California governs itself. The propositions creating it will pass by a hair.

By John Fensterwald on January 5th, 2010