Crisis in Education

All travelogues at this site are suspended temporarily. I repeat, all travelogues at this site have been suspended temporarily. There is a crisis in education and it is much too important, dire, and seriously annoying to be ignored. Oh my goodness, where do I start?

As I see it, the crisis has 3 main points: A) Asinine fools like those on the Texas State Board of Education are trying to hijack the public schools and make them propaganda machines for the right-wing, i.e. Ronald Reagan was the greatest President in history and Thomas Jefferson was an asshole who had the unmitigated gall to coin the term "Separation of church and state." Let's leave that Jefferson clown out of the curriculum. Or try this on for size, "Forget about what objective historians have to say about many of the founding fathers being Deists and not really Christians at all. This is a Christian nation and we need to put the 10 commandments and prayer back in the public schools." Or better yet, "Evolution and global warming are mere theories and questionable science at that. Let's teach creationism and delete all reference to human impact on the environment from science textbooks." Oh my god! Would you send your child to a public school in Texas? Are you aware that this nonsense is spilling over into other states and your state's public school curriculum could be next?

And that's just the first critical point of three. B) The feds are short on cash and they're cutting the amount of funding they give to the states. The states are short on cash and they're cutting the funding they're giving to local school districts. The local school districts are short on cash and they're firing people, closing schools, and eliminating vital programs. C) Most of America just doesn't give a shit. They could care less about the public schools. America doesn't value education. America doesn't want to fund education. America thinks privatization of the public schools will be a good thing. America thinks teachers are all a bunch of lazy schmucks who are paid way too much, and the teacher's unions are keeping them all from being fired and are mostly responsible for ruining America's schools.

One thing at a time, though. The cash issue? Kansas City, Missouri has closed half of the schools in the district. The second largest school district in Illinois, Elgin, has just laid off over a thousand employees. 732 of those employees were teachers. 24 were administrators. I am a teacher, but I also hold an administrative certificate, and I sit on the Instructional Leadership Team for my school. I was called to a meeting at 8 AM this morning by my Principal. She went to a meeting with Ron Huberman, the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools yesterday, along with all of the other Principals in the district.

Here are some of the highlights of what Mr. Huberman has suggested, in order to cut back based on the projected budget shortfalls for the coming year(s). 1. Increase class size in both elementary and high schools to 37 students/class. Reduce Special Education and bilingual program spending, and thus teaching positions in those areas. 2. Cancel academic enhancement programs 3. Cut teaching positions not supported by the numbers (1 teacher/37 students). 4. Reduce funding for gifted and talented education programs. 5. Cut all funding for credit recovery programs like evening and Saturday school programs. 6. Encourage retirements among those who are getting long in the tooth and are being paid way too much. Then don't replace them when they retire. 7. Fire all of those teachers who are in violation of residency requirements for employment by the City of Chicago, and live outside the city limits. Then don't replace them. 8. Fire employees who have allowed their certificates to lapse, and thus are not legal anymore. Then don't replace them. The fun just goes on and on.

Now I see an offer for early retirement coming down the pike. This would reduce payrolls by eliminating some positions and by hiring younger employees with lower salaries in other cases, but the question remains, "Who will pay for the pensions for all of these new retirees?" Just as the feds have been borrowing from the social security fund to pay the bills and it is now time to pay the piper, the State of Illinois has been borrowing from teacher pension funds for a number of years and now they will have to fund them or the funds are in danger of coming up short. The downstate pension fund is in worse shape than the Chicago Teachers' Pension Fund, but both have been underfunded to some degree for a number of years.

This brings us to Point C. America just doesn't give a shit about public education. They don't want to pay taxes to support it. In these pages, I have time and again gone on about how public education is the key to America's future. We have to fund it, or risk becoming a 3rd world nation, a backwater akin to Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, or, dare I say it, Mexico. How much is a one way plane ticket to Australia?

In the State of Illinois we have a reasonably low income tax. Just raising the income tax by 1% will go a long way toward alleviating the Draconian cuts in school budgets. Yet people, primarily Republicans, resist. In my own case, this would mean paying out an additional $700-800 over the course of a year. At the outside, this would mean an additional $30/paycheck in taxes. And it would save thousands of jobs, and the quality of education for millions of Illinois students. How can anyone, in good conscience, oppose this move? If you are a citizen of Illinois, I urge you to call your legislators. If you are a citizen of somewhere else, call an Illinois legislator anyway doggone it. Okay, don't. Your own state is, in all likelihood experiencing a similar crisis and it has to be dealt with. This is big. It's nationwide. Do we let the current financial crisis get the better of us, or do we look to the future and start fixing things right now? There's an educational crisis in America, and it's time we all did our part to fix it.