Jun 23 2009
California Budget Crisis Manifests In Teacher’s Hunger Strike
California, the eighth largest economy in the world, is on the verge of bankruptcy. Last week, the credit rating agency, Standard & Poor, warned that the California budget, if not completed on time, will result in the state’s credit rating, already the lowest in the country, taking another plunge downward. This is due to, according to Governor Schwarzenegger, “inaction and because of always kicking that can down the alley.” According to the governor, the decline in California revenues is not entirely due to the economy; it is because the state has an outdated and extremely volatile tax system. In fact, California’s economy last year did not decline – it went up by .4 percent while, at the same time, the revenues plummeted by more than 20%. In the wake of a resounding loss for the governor’s budget initiatives on the May ballot, Schwarzenegger now proposes to eliminate and consolidate more than a dozen state departments, boards and commissions, particularly those considered to be redundant. The budget proposal also involves cutting 10 percent from every state agency and nearly 10 percent of the funding for education. Since public education comprises about 50% of the state budget, it is taking the biggest hit. Locally the proposed cuts sparked a 24 day hunger strike by Los Angeles teachers who accuse the school board of hoarding federal stimulus money into a savings account while making cuts. The cuts may have had an effect, with LAUSD Superintendent Ray Cortines announcing on Friday that 505 layoff notices for teachers and counselors were being rescinded.
GUEST: Jose Lara, teacher at the Santee Education Complex
7 Responses to “California Budget Crisis Manifests In Teacher’s Hunger Strike”
Schools didn’t take any cuts, overall spending may have dropped because of declining enrollment. I for one am sick of the schools begging for more and more every year.
wow how can you say that? Thousands of us teachers are being laid off and we did not nothing wrong. Plus we make way less than most people. We are under paid and we spend tons of our personal money on our classroom and our students. We did not mismanage the funds and we do no deserve to lose our jobs, or homes, our career.
Let’s be real. The teachers of California get paid more than most teachers in other States. Teachers have a pretty great life – over 3 months off, good job security (Tenure) and a great pension plan.
It not about if you did something wrong to loose your job, it is all about dollar and cents. California has been living high on the hog for way to long. People need to take more responsibility for themselves and not expect Govt to bail them out.
BTW, both my parents were teachers/administrators.
> us teachers are being laid off and we did > not nothing wrong
A teacher? Can’t even write grammatically correct English?
Sorry, but you guys did wrong to countless young people by indoctrinating them with your socialist feel-good claptrap instead of teaching them something useful like language or math. Time to get your well-deserved rewards.
Its sad that education is often one of the first casualties when times are hard. California is getting the worst of it.
Besides for the teachers, the students and parents are getting the worst of it. Some students at USC have been working on a program to help make up the need for summer education.
Its pretty comprehensive and useful for parents and students.
http://sosclassroom.org
As a student, even one so uninvolved in the current economy as I can see how badly teachers have it. Teachers are paid a staggeringly lower amount than some of the people they educate, which is a disgusting feature of our culture. What situation would we be in if we had no teachers? I mean, California has some serious issues in its spending decisions; it’s made apparent by how little concern the governors have towards the future. I for one can see how much of the teachers’ own money is needed to purchase necessary items for classes. This is hardly a reasonable answer to our debt crisis. I know not how to provide a solution, however… politics is not my specialty. It does not seems to be that of our state’s governors either.
Averros, you are a complete moron. Teachers rarely get the freedom to choose their curriculum. They are under so much pressure to have their students perform well on the various state-mandated standardized tests that most of that freedom has been taken away. “What happened” –education HAS taken hits. Teachers are asked to do the same job with less supplies, less text books, and less support. And declining enrollment means nothing: teachers are still teaching classes nearly twice the size they should be teaching, in order for the system to cut costs. In some cases, they aren’t able to give homework because of lack of paper to print it on. Others have had to severely restrict any in-classroom activities that require supplies like paper, pens, pencils, etc. Although this might not matter in affluent communities, because the cost can be passed to the parents, in poorer economic areas this has proved to be a huge problem, as their parents can’t afford to supply them with basic supplies. As a state, a society, we complain that our children are getting a poor education, yet we vote over and over again AGAINST initiatives that would help remedy this,(smaller class sizes, etc) and then we bitch and moan when things don’t change. California teachers might get paid slightly more than OTHER TEACHERS, but teachers are grossly underpaid for what they actually do, and if you think of the cost of living in CA compared to other states, the pay difference is minimal, if anything at all. Not all teachers are perfect, as there are weak members of ANY professional community. But to say that they “have it easy” or are “getting what they deserve” shows your ignorance, insensitivity, and general blindness to a problem that I hope will not affect you and your children someday.