Making Waves blog<\/a> for the Ventura County Star<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I attended my youngest child’s “graduation” ceremony from elementary school today. It was a touching morning filled with awards and a montage of baby photos, girls dressed up in their best dresses and boys squirming uncomfortably in collared shirts. As a long-time parent, I’ve attended quite a few of these affairs.<\/p>\n
But at the end came something that was markedly different from any ceremony I’ve attended before. We bid goodbye to a favorite teacher. My son’s beloved part-time health teacher received a pink slip this spring. In good years these “temporary” teachers find themselves with a job again after the budget issues have settled down. But this is not to be this year.<\/p>\n
A cheer went up among the children when her name was announced along with the other teachers. She’s a favorite with the kids. My quiet little son, who seldom relays details of his school day, often came home with stories about the great discussions he’s had in her class.<\/p>\n
Clearly this is a teacher who is making an impact. And yet we seem to be unable to afford her salary any longer. This is the grim reality of state budget cuts. A family without a second income will be making fewer purchases in the community. Next year’s students will not receive the benefit of her instruction.<\/p>\n
It is a chain of ruin with profound impacts on the future of our children and the economy.<\/p>\n
I went up to her afterward and assured her she would land on her feet. Unable to find child care today, she had her small daughter with her. She thanked me for my words of support and I could see the tears forming in her eyes.<\/p>\n
I think back to the day I watched the TEA Party protesters in Ventura in giddy celebration of taking down the government.<\/p>\n
This is the government: a now unemployed health teacher who really gets through to her pupils, holding the hand of her 3-year-old.<\/p>\n
Marie Lakin is a community activist and writes the Making Waves blog<\/a> for the Ventura County Star<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1817,"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":[],"tags":[75,6935],"class_list":["post-9106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-75","tag-6935"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2mS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9106","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\/1817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}