SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Californians are worried about the budget crisis’ impact on public schools, but are divided in their willingness to pay more taxes to maintain current school funding, according to a new poll released last week.

As the state faces a ballooning budget deficit, the survey by the Public Policy Institute of California also found a sharp decline in residents’ confidence that their elected officials can affectively handle the challenges ahead.

That concern translates to dissatisfaction with elected officials. Four in 10 Californians, or 41 percent, approve of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s overall performance—down from 44 percent in March and 57 percent in December.

State legislators fared even worse. Twenty-six percent of Californians approve of the way lawmakers are doing their jobs overall—down four points since March and 15 points since December.

A strong majority of those surveyed – 60 percent – choose K-12 public education as the area they would like to protect from budget cuts, far ahead of health and human services (18 percent) and higher education (11 percent). But while 48 percent said they were willing to pay more taxes to avoid proposed cuts in public school funding, 48 percent were not.

“There is consensus on the problem and the need for resources,” said PPIC president Mark Baldassare. “But there’s no commitment to action.”

Sixty-three percent of respondents believe that more money would lead to better schools. But 85 percent believe that educational quality would improve if the state simply made better use of the money it spends on schools now.

Even while an overall majority of those polled agreed that the public schools need major improvements, results varied by ethnic and racial group. Blacks (72 percent) and whites (60 percent) are much more likely than Latinos (42 percent) and Asians (38 percent) to say that educational quality is a big problem.

Overall, about seven in 10 Californians say the dropout rate is a big problem, followed by teaching children with limited English skills (46 percent) and teacher quality (28 percent).

But results there also varied by ethnic group. While 84 percent of Latinos and 80 percent of blacks view the dropout rate as a serious problem, 61 percent of whites and 51 percent of Asians consider the dropout rate as a big problem.