{"id":11283,"date":"2010-03-15T21:50:10","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T21:50:10","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-03-15T23:48:35","modified_gmt":"2010-03-15T23:48:35","slug":"attack-on-california-education-continues-22000-layoffs-loom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/03\/15\/attack-on-california-education-continues-22000-layoffs-loom\/","title":{"rendered":"Attack on California Education Continues – 22,000 Layoffs Loom"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATE:<\/b> CTA reports<\/a> the number of pink slips is now 23,225. Original post begins here:<\/p>\n

In 2009, 16,000 teachers and other public school employees lost their jobs. The devastating effect on the quality of education in this state is just beginning to be felt. Now we learn that insane policy of mass firings of teachers and school employees is going to be renewed, as 20,000 more have received pink slips<\/a> this month:<\/p>\n

Faced with another year of potentially deep budget cuts, California’s public schools have sent out 22,000 pink slips to teachers and school employees, according to the state’s superintendent.<\/p>\n

“Our state budget crisis has forced districts to lay off thousands of teachers over the past few years,” said Jack O’Connell, the state superintendent of public instruction. “The governor has proposed cutting another $2.4 billion from public education. While the education community opposes these cuts, our schools are forced to prepare for this potential outcome by issuing a massive wave of potential layoff notices.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office tried to spin this as not their fault, and even claimed the governor wasn’t making further cuts to K-12 budgets:<\/p>\n

Still, a spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Aaron McLear, took umbrage with O’Connell’s characterization of the governor’s January budget proposal, noting that Schwarzenegger has proposed allocating the same amount of money for K-12 and community colleges as he did last year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What McLear didn’t say is that because of the (senseless) expiration of federal stimulus funds, keeping K-12 budgets the same in 2010-11 as in 2009-10 is a de facto<\/em> budget cut. Last March over 30,000 pink slips were issued, and it appears stimulus funds helped about half of those employees to get rehired for this current school year, most of whom were on 1-year temporary contracts. Without stimulus funds, and with a freeze in education spending, those teachers will get laid off for good this summer.<\/p>\n

So far none of the gubernatorial candidates have addressed the destruction of our schools. Sure, Meg Whitman pledges to “fix education” but also pledges to blow an enormous hole<\/a> in the state budget deficit with her tax cuts for the rich. How will she do both?<\/p>\n

As Joe Garofoli points out<\/a>, it might have something to do with her attack on public employee unions. Apparently she thinks teachers and other public workers, who make a middle-class living and retire with a decent though by no means generous pension, make too much money and should learn to do with less.<\/p>\n

That’s not going to solve the problems of our schools. If teacher pay decreases, it will become even more difficult to keep qualified teachers in the classroom to provide the education students deserve.<\/p>\n

But that seems to be Whitman’s approach, since she is on record as opposing new taxes. As California’s schools suffer, Meg Whitman is showing no sign of wanting to help reverse the trend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UPDATE:<\/b> CTA reports<\/a> the number of pink slips is now 23,225. Original post begins here:<\/p>\n

In 2009, 16,000 teachers and other public school employees lost their jobs. The devastating effect on the quality of education in this state is just beginning to be felt. Now we learn that insane policy of mass firings of teachers and school employees is going to be renewed, as 20,000 more have received pink slips<\/a> this month:<\/p>\n

Faced with another year of potentially deep budget cuts, California’s public schools have sent out 22,000 pink slips to teachers and school employees, according to the state’s superintendent.<\/p>\n

“Our state budget crisis has forced districts to lay off thousands of teachers over the past few years,” said Jack O’Connell, the state superintendent of public instruction. “The governor has proposed cutting another $2.4 billion from public education. While the education community opposes these cuts, our schools are forced to prepare for this potential outcome by issuing a massive wave of potential layoff notices.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office tried to spin this as not their fault, and even claimed the governor wasn’t making further cuts to K-12 budgets:<\/p>\n

Still, a spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Aaron McLear, took umbrage with O’Connell’s characterization of the governor’s January budget proposal, noting that Schwarzenegger has proposed allocating the same amount of money for K-12 and community colleges as he did last year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What McLear didn’t say is that because of the (senseless) expiration of federal stimulus funds, keeping K-12 budgets the same in 2010-11 as in 2009-10 is a de facto<\/em> budget cut. Last March over 30,000 pink slips were issued, and it appears stimulus funds helped about half of those employees to get rehired for this current school year, most of whom were on 1-year temporary contracts. Without stimulus funds, and with a freeze in education spending, those teachers will get laid off for good this summer.<\/p>\n

So far none of the gubernatorial candidates have addressed the destruction of our schools. Sure, Meg Whitman pledges to “fix education” but also pledges to blow an enormous hole<\/a> in the state budget deficit with her tax cuts for the rich. How will she do both?<\/p>\n

As Joe Garofoli points out<\/a>, it might have something to do with her attack on public employee unions. Apparently she thinks teachers and other public workers, who make a middle-class living and retire with a decent though by no means generous pension, make too much money and should learn to do with less.<\/p>\n

That’s not going to solve the problems of our schools. If teacher pay decreases, it will become even more difficult to keep qualified teachers in the classroom to provide the education students deserve.<\/p>\n

But that seems to be Whitman’s approach, since she is on record as opposing new taxes. As California’s schools suffer, Meg Whitman is showing no sign of wanting to help reverse the trend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-117"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2VZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}