By Nick Anderson - Washington Post
"California is ground zero for the school budget crisis. The most populous state, with a budget deficit of $19 billion, is shedding summer school, music and art classes, bus routes, days from the school year, and yet-uncounted thousands of teachers. The proposed aid could give the state $2.8 billion in relief."Independent analysts say the state has one of the leanest education budgets in the nation. Its Department of Education estimates that state and local funding per student is down 15 percent over three years. To reduce layoffs, Los Angeles cut five days from the school year; San Francisco cut four.
Senior congressional Democrats and the Obama administration scrambled Wednesday to line up support for $23 billion in federal aid to avert an estimated 100,000 or more school layoffs in a brutal year for education budgets coast to coast.As early as Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee expects to take up a bill that couples the school funding with spending for the Afghanistan war -- a measure that has bipartisan support. But a parallel push in the Senate stalled this week after a leading proponent concluded that he couldn't muster enough votes to surmount Republican opposition.
"We desperately need Congress to act -- to recognize the emergency for what it is," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Wednesday on Capitol Hill. "We have to keep hundreds of thousands of teachers teaching."
Republicans and some Democrats say the government can't afford an extension of last year's economic stimulus that would add to the federal deficit. The stimulus law kept many school budgets afloat with $49 billion in direct aid to states and billions of dollars more for various programs. But the stimulus funding is trailing off before state and local tax revenue can recover from the recession.
Skeptics of a new education jobs fund point out that the teaching force in recent years has grown faster than enrollment, with schools adding instructional coaches and reducing class sizes.
"Giving states another $23 billion in federal education money simply throws more money into taxpayer-funded bailouts when we should be discussing why we aren't seeing the results we need from the billions in federal dollars that are already being spent," said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).
How many of the estimated 3.3 million public school teachers nationwide will lose their jobs remains unknown. Duncan often says 100,000 to 300,000 education jobs are at risk, including support staff. Teachers unions have put the layoff threat in the range of 160,000 -- including 9,000 in New Jersey, 16,000 in New York and 36,000 in California.
Most Washington area school systems plan relatively few layoffs but are squeezing costs, with Fairfax County scrapping most summer school, for example, and Montgomery County increasing class sizes in elementary grades.
The National Education Association, the largest teachers union, said Wednesday that it is funding TV ads in markets that are home to potential swing votes among House Democrats. The ad features children dressed in business suits pleading for a school bailout similar to what bankers received.
(More...)
11 comments:
I can't offer a potential solution for California except to suggest that over 33% of all welfare recipients in America live in that US State.
Perhaps if they reduced entitlements, the numbers would decrease as parasites dropped off one host and searched for a better one -- maybe in Massachusetts. If California had a number of welfare recipients proportionate to the nation the school debt crisis would be solved.
Call me cruel. Call me heartless. Call me reckless with the lives of the hard core unemployable, lazy and so forth.
But kids matter more.
Additionally, if the State of California refused to admit students who were the progeny of parents here illegally, the class size would shrink considerably - in some school districts by 90% (Oxnard School District official stats).
There is a way out. It has nothing to do with bail outs. Bail outs have a way of becoming a way of "traditional funding" over time.
I can explain it in one word, "waste".
When I went to school the classes were designed for 30 students. The class I was in is the biggest in this countries history (class of 64). The teachers would teach 35 students in a class because they and we (we respected our elders) knew it had to be done.
Now, in the town I live in, the classes are designed for 20 students. The union teachers cry if they are asked to expand to 22 students. On top of that, EACH class has a paid teachers assistant! CUT THE ASSISTANT AND GROW THE CLASS SIZE ! Then DEMAND the teachers teach. If the teaches were to do this, the parents would gladly give a raise to them.
Similar cutbacks are coming or will come to other school systems all across the United States.
Today, I happened to discuss with a principal friend of mine just how much certain students, with little hope of ever being able to be educated, are sapping the public education system -- namely, the severely autistic. Most people, i.e., taxpayers, don't have a clue as to how much expenditure is being poured into these students.
Now, I'm a professional educator and have worked with autistic students. Yes, I do have a heart for them and their plight. But the outcome of trying to educate them isn't working out. Worse, those funds could otherwise be painlessly slashed, with some diverted to where the outcome would be so much better for all concerned (teachers, parents, students).
California libs decided decades ago that American students should sacrifice so that illegal alien children could study on the dime of the U.S. taxpayer. This is just another manifestation of an educational decline that's been going on for quite a while.
All over the U.S., the word "Hispanic" is still the magic word that opens up state and municipal coffers.
California teachers have glamorized themselves into believing that they deserve to fully supported by taxpayers. Reality hurts.
California is scroomed. Screwed and doomed.
Right. Let's pour more money in that educational pisshole known as the NEA Teachers Unions. You really want to know what goes on in schools these days? Talk to the cops who are assigned full time to high schools across the country.
Young girls are giving oral sex to multiple teenage boys IN THE HALLWAYS. And the teachers are laughing about it. Inner city schools are a filthy joke. And the NEA has helped turn them into these relativistic moral cesspools where anything goes as long as their contracts are signed and they get paid full time for part time (nine months) work.
I like the teachers but screw their union LOOONG time!!!
LL, the first thing that came into my mind is the cost of educating illegal children and the children of illegal immigrants. Of course OUR children will suffer rather than NOT provide services for those who shouldn't even be there.
Always on Watch, I have a child with Asperger's. He is very capable of learning. The school did NOTHING for him. We put him in private school and are going back to home schooling him next year. The problem with special education isn't with wasting money on them. Even severely autistic children CAN learn (and so can the adults, I work with them). The problem is WHAT public schools try to teach them. But I don't care HOW severe or profound the child, they SHOULD be educated, even if the only thing they they accomplish by the end of high school is the ability to write their full name. I know a child for whom that was the goal.
He was so proud of himself and rightly so. That was not money wasted.
Woodster you took my comment so I can only say 'yep'. I think the teachers are just plain lazy today. Thirty five students or more were the norm. I learned more back in the day when the teachers could shove your ... up against a locker if you got out of hand. Funny about that I remembered more from my school years than a 20 year old ...too long to tell that story.
What, cut welfare in Fornicalia? NO.
Cut salaries of politicians? NO.
Cut political staffs? NO.
Cut per diems of politicians? NO.
Bring in a part-time citizen legislature? NO.
Enact Truth In Spending? NO.
Tort reform? Loser Pays? NO.
Reduce regulations? Create business zones? Reduce taxes? Try to actually encourage business presence in Fornicalia? NO.
Enforce and encourage illegal immigration laws? NO.
Kill state funding to "sanctuary cities"? NO.
Reduce welfare benefits and time-on-benefits? NO.
Simple as that.
BZ
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