If the economy was doing fine, I would be the last to suggest a pay cut, but we all know things are bad. While I think many teachers do a great job and deserve decent pay, I’m appalled that the solution is to screw the kids by providing them less education in such a competitive global environment. So, when California ranks near the bottom for education in this country, our solution is to reduce school days?
I can’t believe that teacher’s benefits remained untouched. Given the choice between having less benefits or giving kids less education, the choice was for less education. Am I missing something here? I understand that the reduction in teaching days is only meant to last a couple of years, but this speaks volumes to me regarding the union’s priorities. They represent the teachers and are not concerned for the students.
The 5-day reduction represents only a $1.1M savings or a 3% pay cut for teachers when the district needs to cut $6.6M from the budget next year. They will likely still fire some of the teachers that have already received pink slips to make up the difference. Here again, the kid’s will be completely forgotten. The union will probably demand that those with sonority keep their jobs without any consideration as to whether those are the best or worse teachers.
This past weekend I heard the candidates running for governor cite that California spends about $70B per year on K-12 education and that about 40% of that money does not make it into the class room. How about shifting some of that money into the classroom? Maybe we need a law that sets a ratio between how much overhead can be spent outside the classroom?
To end my rant, I would like to say to the unions, Californians have stood behind teachers for many years and there has been a great deal of goodwill built up for teachers, but in my opinion the union’s actions are diminishing this positive sentiment. Face it, the era of big spending and lavish benefits is over unless your goal is for the US to end up like Greece. We’ve screwed our kids enough with what we have done to the environment and national debt, let’s not also rob them of a full education.
