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California’s public school system is crucial to the health and future of the Golden State. The 5.85 million students attending the state’s 10,000 K-12 schools need nurturing and a quality education.

For many state lawmakers, responding to this need boils down to an unflagging focus on the annual growth of the state education budget — not necessarily on the mechanics and minutiae of helping schools do a better job. Govs. Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom and the Legislature have never made serious efforts to reform the oversold, disappointing 2013 Local Control Funding Formula law, which was supposed to directly increase resources going to help struggling students but which has never been applied or tracked well. They also have not offered any tough-love guidance needed to help districts adjust to a long-term trend of declining enrollments. This failure applies to such important but low-profile issues as student absenteeism, which an April analysis showed is far higher than past norms.

This backdrop is what makes a recent report so troubling. On an issue in which Brown, Newsom and the Legislature have been actively engaged for years — addressing chronic shortages of credentialed teachers — state efforts that once seemed promising are now falling short. In 2016, when state data showed the number of teachers using emergency credentials had nearly tripled from 2012-13 to 2015-16 — going from 2,122 to 6,133 — lawmakers resolved to act. Given that such teachers were concentrated in struggling districts in less affluent communities, this only added to existing concerns about chronic inequities. As the Legislative Analyst’s Office has detailed, this prompted the state to spend $1.2 billion since then on programs providing financial support to those pursuing full teacher credentials.

It took several years, but this paid off. In 2015-16, the ratio of teachers with full and interim credentials to those with emergency credentials was 2.6 to 1. By 2020-21, this ratio improved to 3.6 to 1, with a 44 percent increase in fully credentialed teachers.

Last week, however, EdSource reported this positive trend had disappeared in the school year that ended last June, the most recent period for which data are available. The year saw a 16 percent decline in the number of new fully credentialed teachers, to 16,491 from 19,659 in the previous school year. The decline was particularly acute — 25 percent — among new teachers credentialed to teach multiple topics in elementary schools.

The analysis noted that while some educators saw the plunge as a fluke tied to unique COVID-19 pandemic conditions, a consensus around the state was that the cost of housing in California makes life on a teacher’s starting pay close to untenable.

The 2023-24 state budget that the Legislature adopted Thursday may offer some help by providing much bigger stipends to “teacher residents” — prospective teachers who gain experience by working part-time with teacher-mentors for a year while finishing required university coursework. It also increases financial incentives for teachers to commit to working for at least four years at “high-needs” schools. But at some point, bolder proposals for a GI Bill-type approach — in which educators, like soldiers, can count on long-term support from their government, in return for making and honoring commitments to public schools — may be worth a hard look for teacher recruitment and retention.

Unless, that is, Californians are OK with a public school system in which students in low-income areas who need the most help are more likely to be taught by less qualified — and even unqualified — teachers. That’s not the case now in the five largest California districts, including San Diego Unified. But a teacher shortage could change that quickly.