This week (as many of you may already know or be experiencing yourself), our state has been laying off many, many wonderful teachers. Our state is in major economic crisis, as is our country (please, out of staters refrain from comments about how great your state is!) Unfortunately the first budget cuts to be made always seem to be in the education department. This week at Jonah's school there were 4 teachers, as well as pe instructors, librarians, computer specialists, tutors, teachers assistance...who were handed pink slips. Our principal next year will become a "teaching principal" meaning she'll teach kindergarten in the morning, while still acting as principal and assume her full principal duties in the afternoon. How lame is that? We already only have 12 teachers at our school, now we're down to 8? And now those teachers who are lucky enough to keep their jobs will have to work that much harder to make up for the lack of pe, computer, library, etc instructors! Why is it that our government (federal included) cannot see the importance of education? Why is it that they pay our teachers so poorly in the first place, then cut their salaries, and pass out pink slips? I was speaking to Jonah's teacher this morning who said that already a first time teacher in our district makes so little that they're eligible for food stamps...food stamps! And now they're saying that many of those teachers can stay only if they take a 5% pay cut...when they're already eligible for food stamps? Come on!
Our education system is the future of this country...of the world! Those future doctors, politicians, lawyers, farmers, etc all go through some sort of education system at some point. What happens when that system fails? What happens to our country then? What is the incentive to become a teacher, go through all of the schooling, rack up the debt, only to be paid pennies or have no job security what so ever? Who wants to do that? Will people stop having the desire to teach...then what? I figure eventually we'll all have to home school anyway...I was just hoping it'd be after my kids graduated :) But seriously, why is it that our society and economic system feels that we should be paying politicians and big wig government execs SOOO much stinkin' money and our teachers nothing? Don't even get David started on the subject - he is VERY passionate about it (or rather pissed off!...pardon my french!)...me too. Because I never had a child in school before, I never knew the issues, but now that I'm "in the know," I've seen the light - or rather darkness.
So basically I think that educators are majorly being screwed over, spit on, and thrown in the gutter. Our educators deserve MUCH more than this!
4 comments:
I cannot believe this! Being a teacher, I think it's really sad for the state to cute so much of the budget- don't they realize they are affecting the future of the state?!!!!! Let me know how things go!
I totally agree! I think there's something wrong with the system when the teacher's kids qualify for school lunch - but that was the case in my district in UT, and ours here in WY. Even though WY doesn't have the budget problems CA does, we're still in a crunch here with education, too. The government has put a lot of money into education,but its still not enough - our monthly take-home salary has nearly doubled in the past 6 years (the base salary was really, really low 6 years ago!), but our family would still qualify for any government program we wanted to (we don't -but still). We're still considered "low income." We're just lucky because we have a lower cost of living and a second job available. The teachers in California have a harder student base, more kids to teach, more days in the school year, a higher cost of living - and less government support. Good teachers will get even more overworked and burned out, and students will pay for it. As you said, no wonder home schooling is becoming more popular.
Thanks for that post. It always makes me happy to know there are people out there who support education and see the value in teachers. I agree with all that was said.
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