Mar 16 2009
California Teachers Fight Back
Last Friday, thousands of teachers and their supporters across California protested the more than 25,000 layoff notices recently issued. The day of action, dubbed “Pink Friday,” decried the 8.4 billion dollar budget cuts slated for the state’s educational institutions including community colleges. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed off on the state budget plan last month, defended the cuts saying that “when you get forced into having to cut 17 billion dollars, you have to cut it from everywhere.” The layoff notices issued across the state, which are preliminary and may not be binding for all, are more than double the number of precautionary pink slips delivered last year. Teachers organizations criticized the severity of the potential layoffs saying that they could have a devastating impact on schools with a large number of non-permanent staff. Students would also be impacted by the inevitable increase in classroom sizes. In May, voters will have an opportunity to approve a spending package for education in a special election. Funds allocated by President Obama’s stimulus package may also be able to stave off a number of job losses.
GUEST: David Sanchez, President of the California Teacher’s Association.
For more information, visit www.pinkfriday09.org.
One Response to “California Teachers Fight Back”
This is what happens when politicians with offspring in private schools (nearly every single child of Assembly and Senate as well as the Gov himself goes to private school) decide the fate of other people’s children.
No politician should have the right to cut education funding for public schools unless their own children are public school students themselves. The owning class has demonstrated time and again their inability to empathize with Other (those below them). That is the underlying basis for the problem. It has to be stopped.