According to a press release from the US Department of Education, Education Secretary Arne Duncan testified before the Senate Appropriations committee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies about the effects of the education budget on education jobs.
Secretary Duncan stated:
“Mister Chairman, you and I recently visited schools in Iowa—which just announced 1500 layoffs—half of them teachers. In Ames they are reducing full-day kindergarten to half day, and delaying textbook purchases. In my home state of Illinois, they are looking at cutting 20,000 teaching jobs. California and New York have also announced more than 20,000 jobs cuts each.
Schools in Jackson, Mississippi are increasing class size while public colleges in neighboring Louisiana are canceling summer classes in the face of $300 million in budget cuts over the next two years. I read recently that some schools in Kansas have gone to a four day school week and Hawaii began Friday furloughs earlier this school year.
New Jersey surveyed over 300 school districts and two-thirds are cutting sports, band, and clubs. Many are also dropping after-school programs. Charlotte, North Carolina will cut 600 teachers next year—Appleton, Wisconsin is losing 50 positions—mostly teachers—while one district in Washington State is cutting ten percent of its teaching work force.
In a survey of school administrators, a third of them say they may have to cut summer school, despite research showing that summer learning loss among low-income students is a significant contributor to the achievement gap.”
Every community in the US can relate to these education budget cuts and the devastation they’re causing to our teaching staff and the availability of our school programs. In these early stages of education reform, the budget cuts are threatening to derail the progress we have made and stunt any progress our schools could obtain with the renewed education guidelines and goals.
The key factor with this most recent speed bump on the road to education progress is to remember that while budgets are always a consideration for all school systems, we need to use our voice and our vote at budget meetings and the polls. We cast the powerful votes that effect our school budgets and show our school boards and teachers that we want the funds allotted for our schools to go to those sources that will benefit our kids, like adequately paying our teachers and administration, providing after school programs and updating textbooks and tools. We can use our voice to encourage our government representatives, both national and local, to support school funding and in so doing, to support our future.
To put it simply, we have to fight for our teachers and schools so they can work to our kids’ advantage.
Posted By: Paul Adams
Thursday, May 6th 2010 at 11:52AM
You can also
click
here to view all posts by this author...
