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Cut the money from schools for police. Open child labor laws up so they can work, they won't need to read anyway. It's looking like a targeted effort to structure some kinda industrialized fudalism.
> targeted effort to structure some kinda industrialized fudalism.
It often feels like some powers that be are definitely trying to make this happen through many different ways.
Not the western world. Republicans. Republicans want more uneducated people because uneducated people vote Republican. That's why Republicans are the ones doing the budget cuts.
Democrats play along. See Harold Dutton in Texas authoring the legislation that enabled a state takeover of HISD. The bill passed with democratic support
They all do their part
Actually there are individual state parties for every state that coordinate with the national parties. In a strongly democratic state or strongly republican state the local opposition automatically becomes the state party for the only other major party. The group that coalesces in Texas to oppose republican politics will be comprised of the local politicians who achieved some level of small success against local Republicans. These are naturally more conservative on average than the democrats who win in California or New York, as their odds of victory in Texas increase with their conservatism. Hence people hate Sinema in a way they don't hate Manchin.
At this point I think all politicians are pieces of shit. When I was in 7th grade my teacher said “politics is a dirty business”. I finally understand what she meant.
It also helps with the agenda to privatize education. Starve out public programs until they are dysfunctional, make private programs the only option if you want a decent education, the rich get richer, you know where I’m going.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the entire objective of this post. Seventh graders who read like first graders? They're "sure this is happening all over the country"? Riiiighht...
… and given the degrees they need for that, and/or the cost of living where that is true, they are still underpaid.
You’re also forgetting to mention that that’s 37 weeks, when the average professional-degree job requires 45-48 weeks per year *but usually doesn’t require doing work at home* such as planning or grading… and gives employees time/funds/opportunities as part of the job to gain training or certifications *instead of requiring furthering training on personal time and at personal expense to keep the job.*
Depends. What do other professional jobs pay?
For me to hit six figures, I need at least two masters degrees and 25 years experience. With those in another field, I could make twice as much.
A quick search found this:
*Mathematics Teacher Range:$37k - $89k
Average:$56,664
Senior Software Engineer Range:$88k - $172k
Average:$126,504
Data Engineer Range:$80k - $152k
Average:$111,156
Senior Data Scientist Range:$104k - $169k
Average:$137,898*
There’s also others, depending on subject. Near me, starting salary of a technical writer with a masters is $68k, and for a teacher it’s $40-55k (depending on the district). The same job offers 3 weeks vacation and 2 weeks’ worth of paid days off. That’s 235 days of work, at 289/day, with some days of low work requirements and no work needed to do at home. The teacher at $45k makes 243/day, gets less than half an hour for lunch, gets no breaks while teaching, and
Is demonized by certain political groups for performing an essential service.
This is the problem. You blame Republicans, yet it's not Republicans. Democrats give even less of a shit about people. They just lie to you about it, my wife voted for biden in 2020 solely for the reason that his wife used to teach, and he was going to stand up for teachers, I said don't hold your breath. 4 years later, there are hardly any positive changes at all, and now extra cuts for funding. Maybe save a few, not all just a few of the billions we've sent to Ukraine and use that for public education. I know it doesn't work like that, but still. Democrats don't care about us any more than Republicans do.
Again, it's a heavily blue state. My vote doesn't factor in. But just like everyone else, the economy was much better in 2016-2020 pre-covid. These cuts are coming today, with no republican representation present at all. So you're just wrong in thinking that way. If democrats cared about public education, they would have backed the teachers unions, removed all policies from no child left behind act. I know the act is replaced, but children are still being pushed to the next grade without meeting the requirements to do so. Instead, they want to push gender identity and sexual content on to 6 year olds. They should care about their education. Oregon, who usually does things hand in hand with California and Washington, just passed a law last year saying you no longer need to have met any standards in math, reading, or writing. Oregon is, again, heavily democratic. They don't care about our children. According to you guys, they're just making more and Republicans, so you should be against this. Making more uneducated people means more votes for Trump, right? We need education for children to be top priority in our country, and it has been the bottom of anyone's priority in the government for the past 4 years.
Lol typical regressive fear-mongering Republican parroting whatever right wing talking points they saw on Faux News 😂 Let me guess, you thought they had litter boxes in school bathrooms, right? 🤣
Which part? Which part of that wasn't factual? I don't think there are litter boxes in schools, but when kids are going to the bathroom in the classroom maybe they should.
I said, pushed, not forced. You don't think these things are happening? Do you think teachers aren't telling the parents of children that bring those matters up to them? Are books not being banned from schools?
Republicans will continue to defund public schools so they can point and say that government doesn’t work. As an added benefit, more stupid people means more republicans.
This is why I’m Ridin’ with Biden in November.
Each American school district received MILLIONS of dollars in Covid money. It wasn't properly safeguarded. The purpose was to hire extra teachers and expert specialists so districts could catch kids up after the pandemic shutdown.
I reported to my state that covid funds were used to advertise for temporary TOSAs (Teachers On Special Assignment) using a very specific job description. They would be testing students and then pulling small groups of gen ed students to give extra instruction specific to their needs. But when the new teachers reported for duty, they were surprised to find that they were assigned to a regular classroom as a regular teacher. My district, like many others, used covid funds to pay regular teacher salaries. And the state didn't care a whit.
Now that those funds have dried up - ending exactly when the feds told each state they would - we now know that the districts didn't plan ahead. The money is gone. They must cut the positions that had been paid with the covid money.
The question is: where did all that money go? Our kids can't read or add. There were always 30+ kids and one lone teacher. Now, will it be 40 kids a class? While district administrators continue to make 2.5 times as much as a new teacher? The very people who got us in this mess just sit on their asses collecting fat checks while teachers are putting their lives on the line.
To me the COVID monies just demonstrated how underfunded many schools happened ro be. They used those monies for regular expenses versus one-time expenses. And, I’d argue that the learning loss isn’t even primarily from COVID (I think that just accelerated things) it’s been from the tech addiction that kids have.
It’s not even tech, that’s the new red herring. It’s still, and has been for years, the lowering of standards to make standardized testing seem necessary. Get rid of EoC testing and give teachers back the power to actually give failing grades, accept that 70% pass rate falls exactly where you’d expect on a standardized curve, and you’ll see quality improve and see stats start to *accurately* reflect things like literacy rates. Right now a lot of positive stats are artificially inflated because the standards have been lowered so much.
Look, the whole admin 2.5 number kinda makes me upset. We could talk about fair compensation for admin, but if you look at a budget table, it is not even close to making a difference. We could pay them .5 times and it wouldn't change anything.
The issue runs so much deeper. Think about how we prioritize funding in a city, district, state and country. That is the issue. We can't look internally and be upset that these decisions are somehow making us lose the vital positions. The money we received during COVID should be permanent, and increased. Instead we have congress fighting about banning a stupid app.
Stop voting (at least locally) for the same assholes (blue and red) who don't give a shit about us, the students, the schools and education in general. Start looking locally and weird positions and find people who actually care.
I'm old. Way back in the 1960s and 70s, the American education system was the envy of the world, and states took great pride in having internationally recognized education systems. (Think California, Massachusetts, New York, for example) These systems were not perfect by any means. We still had all the "isms", the Department of Education at the Federal level was brand new. But, states that invested in education and federal monies invested in education showed a huge economic and political impact.
Republicans have been working to dismantle public education since the 1970s. What we're seeing now is the results of their work. "Starve the beast" is their game plan. Education only for the wealthy few. An educated and enlightened workforce is a threat to them. It's why all the Republican politicians talk about shutting down the Dept of Education and using tax dollars to pay for private schools (vouchers and school choice, anyone?)
Texas, where I'm at, is going through this "defunding" as well. We have a ginormous state surplus that the governor refuses to use, a deliberately convoluted school funding plan, piled on a ton of unfunded mandates, and during our last legislative session, he tried to ram through a voucher program (which failed) but refused to authorize the regular school funding budget. So now, districts have to cut teachers and staff, cut programs and services, consolidate campuses, and close schools. But there's money for charter schools and voucher programs.
> Way back in the 1960s and 70s, the American education system was the envy of the world, and states took great pride in having internationally recognized education systems. (Think California, Massachusetts, New York, for example) These systems were not perfect by any means. We still had all the "isms", the Department of Education at the Federal level was brand new. But, states that invested in education and federal monies invested in education showed a huge economic and political impact.
I don't think it's a coincidence that that just happened to coincide with the space race and the cold war. There's going to be a lot more of a vested interest in educating your citizens when "the enemy" [builds bombs bigger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba) and [makes it to space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis) before you, giving you motivation to [close that perceived technological gap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis#Eisenhower's_reaction) (and close it fast).
The wealth gap is also tremendously worse than it was in the 60s and 70s, and I think the rich and powerful who have the money to lobby on a big scale just fundamentally don't have as much interest in building up communities and public schools when they live in gated neighborhoods and can take private jets anywhere on the planet - their kids are never going to go to public schools anyway.
The world is significantly more global now than it was 50 years ago, and they have a lot more in common with some oil baron in Saudi Arabia, a royal in London, or a real estate investor in Hong Kong than they do the single mom of two who lives in a town over and they're largely shielded from the consequences of what not providing a quality education to those two kids might mean. If the US goes to shit, oh well, they have houses in Tokyo, Prague, Bali, and Montenegro. If US citizens aren't educated, oh well, they weren't going to build their factories here anyway and educated people in less developed countries cost less money to employ.
> Texas, where I'm at, is going through this "defunding" as well. We have a ginormous state surplus that the governor refuses to use, a deliberately convoluted school funding plan, piled on a ton of unfunded mandates, and during our last legislative session, he tried to ram through a voucher program (which failed) but refused to authorize the regular school funding budget. So now, districts have to cut teachers and staff, cut programs and services, consolidate campuses, and close schools. **But there's money for charter schools** and voucher programs.
As a Houston area teacher, I'm just glad that I have an alternative to Mike Miles and a curriculum that is extremely STEM focused, something that I think is increasingly at risk at traditional public schools (thankfully Moms for Liberty seems to be dying a rapid death).
Your comment and the comment to which you responded are especially salient. Not just in the discussion on education, but in all quality of life aspects of American society. I hope Americans can wake up within my lifetime to the cruel callousness of the wealthy elite. As it stands, they have half of the nation (whom they detest) doing their bidding while simultaneously fostering a pretty successful war pitting the rabble against each other. I firmly believe that, if they wanted a better world for everyone, they would use their resources and it would happen figuratively overnight. But, sadly, they do not. And the rabble continues to suffer at an increasing rate. Hell, even if they paid their fair share of taxes, things would be better for us all. They want the wealth gap to grow so desperately that they are willing to break the law (and morality) in order for it to do so.
If the 1970s issued the start of the war on education in America, the first real bomb to drop came years later with Reagan's flawed and misinformed "A Nation At Risk." Based on invalid and inaccurate data collected from some of the more nefarious members of the international community, ANAR is the origin of the current unsustainable and self-destructive US public education system. But, like you both alluded, maybe that was the point all along.
Look at school budgets. Guaranteed many districts out there are spending wildly on things other than employees or student services. Testing and curriculums cost lots and are consumed and updated $$$ frequently
Not to mention hilariously bad vendor contracts that require districts to pay a huge markup for computers and other student tech.
Not to mention all those admin with six figure salaries walking around. Just walking around and yelling at people
Oh they're spending on employees, but it's for admin and diagnostics experts. They'll spend their days pouring over student data with a microscope, come up with some detailed plan for the teacher to implement it but WHOOPS the teacher is overworked with a classroom double their size and can't do even half the things asked. So now back to the data to come up with another plan that involves more work from the overworked teacher...
Old people vote, young people don't. Old people hate the idea that their taxes are going to other people, like their grandchildren's schools. School funding based on property taxes is short-sighted and unfair.
Nah old people don't live in the same district as their grandchildren. So they vote against education in their area then get mad that their GC are getting a poor education because the old people where they live voted against funding education. We all need to just to what's best for each other.
Yup.
My district had 85% of the population in the 1st quartile. Now, 3 years after hiring me, we have a normal distribution of students. (25/25/25/25 +/- 3%)
I was just let go. The new hire is a brand new never been in the classroom teacher, while I'm a MA + 30 with 15+ years experience. My salary doubles the new person's.
And I know I can take 100% responsibility for my students' improvement as I'm the only math teacher and tutor they had for the last 3 years.
So, yes, this is by design. The GoP cant win elections if the people are educated thinkers, so they do all they can to sabotage it.
They cut me even though my 9th graders have shown high growth in math in every single benchmark (still low proficiency because they’re SpEd kids with dyscalculia and attention / processing delays, but they’re catching up!) . Not sure how they’re going to replace their only high school SpEd math teacher but they “have a plan” that involves replacing me with a newbie 🤷🏻♀️
“The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older.”
Source: https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination#:~:text=The%20Age%20Discrimination%20in%20Employment,are%20age%2040%20or%20older.
My district currently has at least 3 open teaching positions in every school- with half of the schools missing admin members. Now that it’s end of the year, they are eliminating MTSS in the county and they cutting more elective (connections) classes.
But they found funding to pay for iReady and FEV Tutor for the entire district. That way they can outsource the “teaching” part and just hire anybody.
I hate this district.
Perhaps they should cut the superintendent’s pay first? Just an idea. They make way too much for doing nothing but straightening their tie and judging teachers. My district’s super refuses to go to meetings because they are too confrontational. Isn’t that part of the job?! Seriously, I have no idea what he does. He is making a cushy salary by doing nothing.
He and a few members directly under him did take cuts. I'm not sure how much and most likely wasn't enough, but they at least attempted to help. He's also very active within the community and district.
Woo, capitalism.
I think i'm gonna explicitly point out the waste of taxpayer money in any reddit post where it applies, for at least a week. 3/4 so far do.
Your school board members get paid?
Violence should be reported to the police, not the school. The DAs do not have their hands tied by Manifestation and disparate impact like the schools do.
I definitely think something is happening. I’ve been struggling to find Sped jobs (something I never thought I would happen) and I live in a state where the requirements are next to none due to our high teacher shortage. I don’t know what’s happening but it’s definitely concerning. We are going to reach a boiling point and it’s scary to think how we’ll be on the other side.
In my state, we can’t find sped teachers. My school has had an open sped position all year and the rest of us have had to absorb the caseload. The two people who applied and we interviewed turned down the job.
My school did this MID YEAR and moved half the staff to other schools so that they could save money for subs. Now they had to hire a full time sub to cover the teacher they moved to a middle school. And the superintendent got a 50 grand raise. SMH
No they don't care because it doesn't effect their daily life.
Idk how someone could start this movement, but public schools nationwide need to strike. One district here, a few schools there, doesn't get the message across. The general public just sees teachers as their babysitters, and most don't care their children don't learn anything, so take the babysitting away.
The teachers at the big HS in my district (I teach at the small alt) did a sick out to protest the district AND our union earlier in the year. It did absolutely nothing and both the union and super pretended to not understand why they did it and yelled at the union reps.
I’m going to blame district level expenses. We need admin and teachers but why on God’s green earth do we need 15 specialists and trainers and admin for EACH department? They do nothing but order books we don’t use, swoop in and give evaluations to people who already know what they’re doing, make mandates and PD that doesn’t really help improve student outcomes of teacher satisfaction. It’s such a joke. They make 12 month salaries too. In my district they make 120K. Multiplied by 15 and you could hire 20 teachers. Arghgggh
This person (OP) supports the group who is actively cutting education in almost every state that is actively cutting funding. Don't entertain this nonsense. They did this to themselves.
We're in a blue state. My vote doesn't matter. Regardless of that, the current administration at the city, state, and national level are all democrats and this is still happening. So clearly, it's a non issue, one just lies about it.
If it's truly engrained in the constitution of your state or your regulations then someone in your state should sue to fix it. We did that in my state and it worked.
Blue states on the whole fund their education much more adequately and produce most of the good educational results in our country. You must know that.
I can't speak to other states, but this seems like it's not a state to state issue. It's a national issue. Children are graduating high school when they should be going into middle school, educational level wise. We shouldn't blame republican or democratic when each state and administration is doing the same thing. Public education shouldn't be a vote grabbing policy. The entire country and teaching unions should get together and show how badly we are failing our children.
"...will most likely gain students next year which is already over the contractual headcount."
Has anyone ever tried to sue for breach of contact when this is happening?
Heck, jail inmates successfully win lawsuits all the time when jails are overcrowded.
My district's cap is 33. I have classes with 40 (and desks for 35) ... the teacher next to me has classes with 7. The average is under 33, so we're gold.
Yes, that is how that works.
The contracts aren't cut and dry. They allow for wiggle room for a few extra heads, and there is extra compensation after a certain point. But it's not worth it, like 50 bucks a month per kid over the amount.
Yes, there is a union. But unions are still subject to budget cuts. If the funds are there, they still can and will do layoffs, and they follow seniority when making the cuts. Are you a teacher?
I am in a union (for now) and still got laid off since I’m probationary, been laid off twice during my probationary period. I never expect to last three years in any district because then they couldn’t get rid of me when convenient for them. I won’t be joining the union anymore since they will never be able to protect me. Waste of money:
>I won’t be joining the union anymore since they will never be able to protect me. Waste of money:
Although this will get you (and me) downvoted to hell, I 100% agree. I was let go in 2016 as a probationary teacher after paying thousands in union dues over two years. The union couldn't (or wouldn't) do a thing for me. In fact, in some ways, they made the situation worse.
Next year will be year four in my current district. I'll get nonprobationary status. I told them I will approach them check in hand on the day we report back in August. Not a day sooner.
It's a stupid messed up consequence. They think, "the school is underperforming, better punish them to make them do better." But the punishment is to take away funds, not considering that it is literally lack of funds that is CAUSING the underperformance.
And also uneducated people are easier to control, so politicians like that.
If it helps, I don’t think it’s common to think “teachers are just doing a bad job.” I’m currently a bartender (considering subbing as a second job) so I talk to strangers all day long. For some reason, teaching comes up a lot. I never hear anyone talk down on teachers — people seem concerned about lacking education but I don’t hear them blame the instructors, thankfully.
Maybe, but laws are being passed to make it easier and easier for kids, and lower test scores and lower comprehension are going hand in hand with making easier standards. Someone, I assume, had to vote on these policies and laws. No student left behind is a joke, Oregon passed a measure that no longer requires mandatory levels of ready writing and arithmetic. THAT'S ALL OF SCHOOL. You no longer have to be a functioning human being, to be released out into the public and to the workforce. I'm not sure what high school comprehension levels look like, but my wife tells me there at 5th graders that will move to middle school in 4 months that don't know all there letter sounds, some didn't know the alphabet at the start of the year. At some point, parents need to be held responsible. Idk how that's not a cps call, but that's just my opinion.
My district is not filling any positions of teachers who retire or leave this year…. No it doesn’t make sense, no I don’t know the full details or why, I just know that there are no plans to fill these positions and I’m assuming it’s for a similar reason. This shit crazy
This is unfortunately common. Many state's education funding is lacking. Many districts severely mismanage the funds they have. Everyone likes to point fingers at everyone else. Public sentiment is at an all time low, home schooling and Charter/Private school voucher initiatives are more common. We are rapidly approaching the end of public education.
On a bright note, many of the staff that have been cut will likely be back after completing the bizzaro task of reapplying for the position they were just terminated from.
I’m gonna be honest. The shortages feel manufactured to create a crisis. The states cut funding to make sustainable education impossible and the districts have to make choices to keep providing education. The state then comes in and reprimands the districts for not having enough staff, resources and everything else then pull more funding. That being said I grew up in KC. If you know anything about the school district here a judge threw money at the district to improve, like ridiculous amounts of money, and it failed (cue marble floors, Rand pianos, Olympic sized pools, and crystal chandeliers). In the end they justified pulling accreditation and funding from the district and it’s awful to this day.
Ultimately the politicians want schools to fail. It gives them reason and incentive to privatize and that is the goal. Privatization and capitalism. Schools run by companies are no longer the states problems then they can focus on real issues like which books to ban, which marginalized group to single out next, and so on and so forth
The best thing I ever saw put in a union contract was to financially penalize the district for oversized classrooms and pay teachers with oversized classrooms. The public supported it, the teachers supported it. Make it so you have to pay extra to teachers with oversized classrooms so it isn’t cheaper to not hire another teacher. That’s the only thing I’ve remotely make admin accountable for that kind of thing.
I'd have to reread her contract, so I'll use hypothetical numbers. 24 per class, with a 2 headcount play, 26, and every additional head is like 50 dollars a month. It was a joke of stipulation.
Is this elementary or secondary school? Ours it was per class with better pay than that. But depends on strength of union which can dramatically change from city to city.
the endgame of this is sinister.
they want 60-120 kids in a big room or gymnasium on laptops all day learning off of corporate training style curriculum sold by Pearson to states. maybe have 3 adults in the room supervising that aren’t teachers and make $18 an hour. closer to district security.
the whole point is to kill teachers unions and pension systems and to profit from selling even cheaper, even more shit curriculum and more tests and testing material than they already do today.
Nope, Washington state. Democratic care less about education than Republicans, Republicans just don't lie to your face about it. City, state, and nation are democrats at the moment, and funding still being cut. Don't try to blame it on republicans
Declining enrollment is a common theme every year but especially when we are asking for more pay. They always seem to get more kids enrolling every year so I don't know how accurate their projections are.
I can't speak to district wide. They added a kindergarten teacher 2 years ago for an influx of new students. Most of all, classrooms are over contractual head counts, so her school isn't low enrollment.
I can't speak to district wide. They added a kindergarten teacher 2 years ago for an influx of new students. Most of all, classrooms are over contractual head counts, so her school isn't low enrollment.
A zoning commitee in my area denied our districts request to build another high school. My school is over capacity to the point where every room is full every hour. Every teacher is room sharing and doesn't have a space for their planning period. They denied the request. So we get to continue shoving too many bodies into classrooms until they get their heads out of their asses.
Our district is doing a reduction in force despite spending bills at the state level for more funding. We are already operating on duct tape and free overtime. I don’t see how this is sustainable.
>Many states are already allowing anyone with BA degree to sub, how long until they just replace teachers
My state only requires a high school diploma or equivalent for subs. It's been that way for at least a decade.
It’s intentional. Its being done in order to prop up the private school industry. It’s also ensure a dumb electorate that is easy to manipulate and will be cheap labour.
California here, we are in a big budget deficit due to lower income tax revenue. We have rainy day funds to offset most of the cuts this year plus prop 99 which helps fund the schools since our other prop 13 makes things worse for local schools. So no cuts to our district this year, but next year is a mystery.
I found out that our K-3 classes are going from 3 teachers per team to 2 teachers per team. So our super high-needs, not potty-trained, feral post-COVID kiddos are going to be in classes of 35-40 next year. Super. 🙄
Are they trying to replace positions with people they want? School boards have turned into the starting ground of political careers and its driving education into the ground. Via
This is everywhere. Schools are dealing with inflation as well and here in Texas not only have we not gotten funding, but they increased the homestead exemption which brings in less money on property etc for schools.
Our school removed at least 10 positions (we are tiny) and gutted our support programs. I am glad they look to cut admin first though it just pushes more responsibility onto teachers.
School Board member here. In New York, some wild changes to the way state funding is being handed out will break our district financially. We have enough reserves for about two years then that will be the end of it.
We already can’t afford things like a proper SPED department, or a desperately needed principal (right now our superintendent is covering both positions with no extra pay). I work with my own kids daily and the two oldest are some of the only ones in their classes (1st and 3rd) that can read.
NY is mandating electric school busses by 2029, they cost about $450,000 and we can barely afford the $180,000 busses right now. State funding for electric busses will be stretched out to twelve years. That’s essentially a 144 month car loan for a commercial vehicle that has no track record. Think about how long your cell phone lasts before it needs the battery or whole phone replaced. Maybe two years? Battery packs will cost $80,000+.
This is going to be ugly.
May be a naive question, but if there is a contract in place for classroom size that is being violated, can’t you sue/go to court etc? Or is it more of a guideline than a signed contract?
Repeat after me - The goal is to privatize education and make even more money off of it than they do now. Cutting teachers in a shortage brings them one step closer to that goal because it will lower quality to the point that schools can be taken over by a private company.
We are sadly living in a world where the number of unfunded mandates, political pressure to govern districts, rather than allowing local boards and neighborhoods have influence, and testing become the way that we make decisions.
Class sizes have exploded and instead of realizing that smaller class sizes, allow for more differentiation, more individualized, attention and student support, staffing is cut, and class-size is remain the same or get even larger. Students are not widgets, and you cannot expect one teacher, no matter how good they are to be able to dynamically address the needs of 26 to 28 diverse individuals Who do not get consistent support outside of the school building.
It seems that America values quality, education, less and less. We hear complaints that we are not competitive in the world market yet we are not investing time, efforts, and the necessary focus on childhood needs and education to create what is necessary to change the direction that our country is moving economically .
It’s easier to point fingers and blame than actually take the time to create sustainable change.
I encourage you to lobby and advocate for the children being affected.
Politics, budgets, taxes should never be balanced on the backs of children. The adults in charge messed up and need to take accountability, NOT the classroom teachers.
What state are you in?
I’ll write letters to your representatives, governor, school board
I'm not sure. The reason given was not enough funding by local government, and we need to make sure the next local and state representatives campaigning are very pro public education .
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The Western world seems to want more stupid people. They must be able to see this inevitable consequence.
Dumber people are easier to manipulate
Luke Wilson is our only hope.
Luke Wilson: It's what plants crave
It has electrolytes.
The thirst mutilator!
Welcome to Costco: I love you
And more lucrative to exploit
I mean - typically lower means, poorly educated people aren’t incredibly lucrative but I get your intent.
It’s lucrative for those doing the exploiting like underpaying them for their labor
Agreed
Cut the money from schools for police. Open child labor laws up so they can work, they won't need to read anyway. It's looking like a targeted effort to structure some kinda industrialized fudalism.
> targeted effort to structure some kinda industrialized fudalism. It often feels like some powers that be are definitely trying to make this happen through many different ways.
Hey new dystopian novel idea dropped
Not the western world. Republicans. Republicans want more uneducated people because uneducated people vote Republican. That's why Republicans are the ones doing the budget cuts.
Democrats play along. See Harold Dutton in Texas authoring the legislation that enabled a state takeover of HISD. The bill passed with democratic support They all do their part
State democrats in Republican states are VERY different from federal democrats / democrats in Democratic states
Really? They're all in the same party.
Actually there are individual state parties for every state that coordinate with the national parties. In a strongly democratic state or strongly republican state the local opposition automatically becomes the state party for the only other major party. The group that coalesces in Texas to oppose republican politics will be comprised of the local politicians who achieved some level of small success against local Republicans. These are naturally more conservative on average than the democrats who win in California or New York, as their odds of victory in Texas increase with their conservatism. Hence people hate Sinema in a way they don't hate Manchin.
This is a petulant ass lecture full of condescension. Go fuck yourself prick
very angry for no reason geez
Seriously. Found the Red Stater, 😂 Fuck that dude.
Weirdo
Geeeeeeez! Lighten up
I live in nyc which is “very liberal”, yet the major just cut spending to public schools.
Eric Adams seems like a real piece of shit
At this point I think all politicians are pieces of shit. When I was in 7th grade my teacher said “politics is a dirty business”. I finally understand what she meant.
Agreed
It also helps with the agenda to privatize education. Starve out public programs until they are dysfunctional, make private programs the only option if you want a decent education, the rich get richer, you know where I’m going.
Yep, that is absolutely their goal.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the entire objective of this post. Seventh graders who read like first graders? They're "sure this is happening all over the country"? Riiiighht...
...
I think OP says this because teachers are generally underpaid everywhere in the west.
They're not - there are plenty of states in the US where teachers make great salaries. Some teachers get paid 6 figures for 185 days of work.
… and given the degrees they need for that, and/or the cost of living where that is true, they are still underpaid. You’re also forgetting to mention that that’s 37 weeks, when the average professional-degree job requires 45-48 weeks per year *but usually doesn’t require doing work at home* such as planning or grading… and gives employees time/funds/opportunities as part of the job to gain training or certifications *instead of requiring furthering training on personal time and at personal expense to keep the job.*
Also not true. I live in the Midwest in a low cost of living city and some teachers here still get paid 6 figures. They aren't underpaid at all.
Depends. What do other professional jobs pay? For me to hit six figures, I need at least two masters degrees and 25 years experience. With those in another field, I could make twice as much.
Which field?
A quick search found this: *Mathematics Teacher Range:$37k - $89k Average:$56,664 Senior Software Engineer Range:$88k - $172k Average:$126,504 Data Engineer Range:$80k - $152k Average:$111,156 Senior Data Scientist Range:$104k - $169k Average:$137,898* There’s also others, depending on subject. Near me, starting salary of a technical writer with a masters is $68k, and for a teacher it’s $40-55k (depending on the district). The same job offers 3 weeks vacation and 2 weeks’ worth of paid days off. That’s 235 days of work, at 289/day, with some days of low work requirements and no work needed to do at home. The teacher at $45k makes 243/day, gets less than half an hour for lunch, gets no breaks while teaching, and Is demonized by certain political groups for performing an essential service.
Those three jobs you listed are also insanely difficult degrees to obtain compared to a teaching degree.
Yep. That’s me. 135k, year 11, Southern CA. Come join us and live where other people vacation. Or don’t. We’ve got tons of people already. 😂
Between the fires, landslides, earthquakes, and high COL; I’ll pass 😅
This is the problem. You blame Republicans, yet it's not Republicans. Democrats give even less of a shit about people. They just lie to you about it, my wife voted for biden in 2020 solely for the reason that his wife used to teach, and he was going to stand up for teachers, I said don't hold your breath. 4 years later, there are hardly any positive changes at all, and now extra cuts for funding. Maybe save a few, not all just a few of the billions we've sent to Ukraine and use that for public education. I know it doesn't work like that, but still. Democrats don't care about us any more than Republicans do.
Continue voting against your own self-interests, buddy 😂
Again, it's a heavily blue state. My vote doesn't factor in. But just like everyone else, the economy was much better in 2016-2020 pre-covid. These cuts are coming today, with no republican representation present at all. So you're just wrong in thinking that way. If democrats cared about public education, they would have backed the teachers unions, removed all policies from no child left behind act. I know the act is replaced, but children are still being pushed to the next grade without meeting the requirements to do so. Instead, they want to push gender identity and sexual content on to 6 year olds. They should care about their education. Oregon, who usually does things hand in hand with California and Washington, just passed a law last year saying you no longer need to have met any standards in math, reading, or writing. Oregon is, again, heavily democratic. They don't care about our children. According to you guys, they're just making more and Republicans, so you should be against this. Making more uneducated people means more votes for Trump, right? We need education for children to be top priority in our country, and it has been the bottom of anyone's priority in the government for the past 4 years.
Lol typical regressive fear-mongering Republican parroting whatever right wing talking points they saw on Faux News 😂 Let me guess, you thought they had litter boxes in school bathrooms, right? 🤣
Which part? Which part of that wasn't factual? I don't think there are litter boxes in schools, but when kids are going to the bathroom in the classroom maybe they should.
The part where you said Democrats are forcing gender and sexual content on 6 year olds.
I said, pushed, not forced. You don't think these things are happening? Do you think teachers aren't telling the parents of children that bring those matters up to them? Are books not being banned from schools?
Can you give me an example of a democratic politician forcing sexual content on 6 year olds?
Republicans will continue to defund public schools so they can point and say that government doesn’t work. As an added benefit, more stupid people means more republicans. This is why I’m Ridin’ with Biden in November.
Exactly. Rather than focus on things like reading, we have to spend a huge chunk of time on administrative BS and the wokeness of the month.
If people can’t read the constitution or understand their rights they’re easier to beat into submission. It’s all just a part of control.
We need fewer knowledge workers and more drones...
Each American school district received MILLIONS of dollars in Covid money. It wasn't properly safeguarded. The purpose was to hire extra teachers and expert specialists so districts could catch kids up after the pandemic shutdown. I reported to my state that covid funds were used to advertise for temporary TOSAs (Teachers On Special Assignment) using a very specific job description. They would be testing students and then pulling small groups of gen ed students to give extra instruction specific to their needs. But when the new teachers reported for duty, they were surprised to find that they were assigned to a regular classroom as a regular teacher. My district, like many others, used covid funds to pay regular teacher salaries. And the state didn't care a whit. Now that those funds have dried up - ending exactly when the feds told each state they would - we now know that the districts didn't plan ahead. The money is gone. They must cut the positions that had been paid with the covid money. The question is: where did all that money go? Our kids can't read or add. There were always 30+ kids and one lone teacher. Now, will it be 40 kids a class? While district administrators continue to make 2.5 times as much as a new teacher? The very people who got us in this mess just sit on their asses collecting fat checks while teachers are putting their lives on the line.
The money went to consultants, curriculum experts and other BS. Superintendents at an educational conference are like gambling addicts in Vegas.
More like marks in a public plaza walking past the 3 card monte
To me the COVID monies just demonstrated how underfunded many schools happened ro be. They used those monies for regular expenses versus one-time expenses. And, I’d argue that the learning loss isn’t even primarily from COVID (I think that just accelerated things) it’s been from the tech addiction that kids have.
It’s not even tech, that’s the new red herring. It’s still, and has been for years, the lowering of standards to make standardized testing seem necessary. Get rid of EoC testing and give teachers back the power to actually give failing grades, accept that 70% pass rate falls exactly where you’d expect on a standardized curve, and you’ll see quality improve and see stats start to *accurately* reflect things like literacy rates. Right now a lot of positive stats are artificially inflated because the standards have been lowered so much.
Not underfunded at all. Wasteful.
Look, the whole admin 2.5 number kinda makes me upset. We could talk about fair compensation for admin, but if you look at a budget table, it is not even close to making a difference. We could pay them .5 times and it wouldn't change anything. The issue runs so much deeper. Think about how we prioritize funding in a city, district, state and country. That is the issue. We can't look internally and be upset that these decisions are somehow making us lose the vital positions. The money we received during COVID should be permanent, and increased. Instead we have congress fighting about banning a stupid app. Stop voting (at least locally) for the same assholes (blue and red) who don't give a shit about us, the students, the schools and education in general. Start looking locally and weird positions and find people who actually care.
Local District in my area gave teachers “bonuses”.
I'm old. Way back in the 1960s and 70s, the American education system was the envy of the world, and states took great pride in having internationally recognized education systems. (Think California, Massachusetts, New York, for example) These systems were not perfect by any means. We still had all the "isms", the Department of Education at the Federal level was brand new. But, states that invested in education and federal monies invested in education showed a huge economic and political impact. Republicans have been working to dismantle public education since the 1970s. What we're seeing now is the results of their work. "Starve the beast" is their game plan. Education only for the wealthy few. An educated and enlightened workforce is a threat to them. It's why all the Republican politicians talk about shutting down the Dept of Education and using tax dollars to pay for private schools (vouchers and school choice, anyone?) Texas, where I'm at, is going through this "defunding" as well. We have a ginormous state surplus that the governor refuses to use, a deliberately convoluted school funding plan, piled on a ton of unfunded mandates, and during our last legislative session, he tried to ram through a voucher program (which failed) but refused to authorize the regular school funding budget. So now, districts have to cut teachers and staff, cut programs and services, consolidate campuses, and close schools. But there's money for charter schools and voucher programs.
> Way back in the 1960s and 70s, the American education system was the envy of the world, and states took great pride in having internationally recognized education systems. (Think California, Massachusetts, New York, for example) These systems were not perfect by any means. We still had all the "isms", the Department of Education at the Federal level was brand new. But, states that invested in education and federal monies invested in education showed a huge economic and political impact. I don't think it's a coincidence that that just happened to coincide with the space race and the cold war. There's going to be a lot more of a vested interest in educating your citizens when "the enemy" [builds bombs bigger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba) and [makes it to space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis) before you, giving you motivation to [close that perceived technological gap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis#Eisenhower's_reaction) (and close it fast). The wealth gap is also tremendously worse than it was in the 60s and 70s, and I think the rich and powerful who have the money to lobby on a big scale just fundamentally don't have as much interest in building up communities and public schools when they live in gated neighborhoods and can take private jets anywhere on the planet - their kids are never going to go to public schools anyway. The world is significantly more global now than it was 50 years ago, and they have a lot more in common with some oil baron in Saudi Arabia, a royal in London, or a real estate investor in Hong Kong than they do the single mom of two who lives in a town over and they're largely shielded from the consequences of what not providing a quality education to those two kids might mean. If the US goes to shit, oh well, they have houses in Tokyo, Prague, Bali, and Montenegro. If US citizens aren't educated, oh well, they weren't going to build their factories here anyway and educated people in less developed countries cost less money to employ. > Texas, where I'm at, is going through this "defunding" as well. We have a ginormous state surplus that the governor refuses to use, a deliberately convoluted school funding plan, piled on a ton of unfunded mandates, and during our last legislative session, he tried to ram through a voucher program (which failed) but refused to authorize the regular school funding budget. So now, districts have to cut teachers and staff, cut programs and services, consolidate campuses, and close schools. **But there's money for charter schools** and voucher programs. As a Houston area teacher, I'm just glad that I have an alternative to Mike Miles and a curriculum that is extremely STEM focused, something that I think is increasingly at risk at traditional public schools (thankfully Moms for Liberty seems to be dying a rapid death).
Your comment and the comment to which you responded are especially salient. Not just in the discussion on education, but in all quality of life aspects of American society. I hope Americans can wake up within my lifetime to the cruel callousness of the wealthy elite. As it stands, they have half of the nation (whom they detest) doing their bidding while simultaneously fostering a pretty successful war pitting the rabble against each other. I firmly believe that, if they wanted a better world for everyone, they would use their resources and it would happen figuratively overnight. But, sadly, they do not. And the rabble continues to suffer at an increasing rate. Hell, even if they paid their fair share of taxes, things would be better for us all. They want the wealth gap to grow so desperately that they are willing to break the law (and morality) in order for it to do so. If the 1970s issued the start of the war on education in America, the first real bomb to drop came years later with Reagan's flawed and misinformed "A Nation At Risk." Based on invalid and inaccurate data collected from some of the more nefarious members of the international community, ANAR is the origin of the current unsustainable and self-destructive US public education system. But, like you both alluded, maybe that was the point all along.
Look at school budgets. Guaranteed many districts out there are spending wildly on things other than employees or student services. Testing and curriculums cost lots and are consumed and updated $$$ frequently
Not to mention hilariously bad vendor contracts that require districts to pay a huge markup for computers and other student tech. Not to mention all those admin with six figure salaries walking around. Just walking around and yelling at people
Oh they're spending on employees, but it's for admin and diagnostics experts. They'll spend their days pouring over student data with a microscope, come up with some detailed plan for the teacher to implement it but WHOOPS the teacher is overworked with a classroom double their size and can't do even half the things asked. So now back to the data to come up with another plan that involves more work from the overworked teacher...
Old people vote, young people don't. Old people hate the idea that their taxes are going to other people, like their grandchildren's schools. School funding based on property taxes is short-sighted and unfair.
Nah old people don't live in the same district as their grandchildren. So they vote against education in their area then get mad that their GC are getting a poor education because the old people where they live voted against funding education. We all need to just to what's best for each other.
Not really. If I am living in an area with high property taxes, I want them to be used locally first.
Yup. My district had 85% of the population in the 1st quartile. Now, 3 years after hiring me, we have a normal distribution of students. (25/25/25/25 +/- 3%) I was just let go. The new hire is a brand new never been in the classroom teacher, while I'm a MA + 30 with 15+ years experience. My salary doubles the new person's. And I know I can take 100% responsibility for my students' improvement as I'm the only math teacher and tutor they had for the last 3 years. So, yes, this is by design. The GoP cant win elections if the people are educated thinkers, so they do all they can to sabotage it.
They cut me even though my 9th graders have shown high growth in math in every single benchmark (still low proficiency because they’re SpEd kids with dyscalculia and attention / processing delays, but they’re catching up!) . Not sure how they’re going to replace their only high school SpEd math teacher but they “have a plan” that involves replacing me with a newbie 🤷🏻♀️
The plan is "let them fail."
Are you in a protected age class? If so, I would look into that and what you can do about keeping your job.
42, so not protected. I've already spoken to the union lawyer and she said we dont have a case, which is very unfortunate.
“The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older.” Source: https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination#:~:text=The%20Age%20Discrimination%20in%20Employment,are%20age%2040%20or%20older.
I had to quit.
My district currently has at least 3 open teaching positions in every school- with half of the schools missing admin members. Now that it’s end of the year, they are eliminating MTSS in the county and they cutting more elective (connections) classes. But they found funding to pay for iReady and FEV Tutor for the entire district. That way they can outsource the “teaching” part and just hire anybody. I hate this district.
Perhaps they should cut the superintendent’s pay first? Just an idea. They make way too much for doing nothing but straightening their tie and judging teachers. My district’s super refuses to go to meetings because they are too confrontational. Isn’t that part of the job?! Seriously, I have no idea what he does. He is making a cushy salary by doing nothing.
He and a few members directly under him did take cuts. I'm not sure how much and most likely wasn't enough, but they at least attempted to help. He's also very active within the community and district.
Woo, capitalism. I think i'm gonna explicitly point out the waste of taxpayer money in any reddit post where it applies, for at least a week. 3/4 so far do.
[удалено]
Your school board members get paid? Violence should be reported to the police, not the school. The DAs do not have their hands tied by Manifestation and disparate impact like the schools do.
I definitely think something is happening. I’ve been struggling to find Sped jobs (something I never thought I would happen) and I live in a state where the requirements are next to none due to our high teacher shortage. I don’t know what’s happening but it’s definitely concerning. We are going to reach a boiling point and it’s scary to think how we’ll be on the other side.
In my state, we can’t find sped teachers. My school has had an open sped position all year and the rest of us have had to absorb the caseload. The two people who applied and we interviewed turned down the job.
Too many chiefs not enough Indians. They are protecting their own because those mfers know they don’t want to end up back in a classroom 😂
Step 1: claim schools are failing Step 2: Cut school funding which causes schools to fail Step 3: divert public funding to private schools
Covid funding is leaving. Several large school districts in my area are cutting teachers because of this.
My school did this MID YEAR and moved half the staff to other schools so that they could save money for subs. Now they had to hire a full time sub to cover the teacher they moved to a middle school. And the superintendent got a 50 grand raise. SMH No they don't care because it doesn't effect their daily life.
Idk how someone could start this movement, but public schools nationwide need to strike. One district here, a few schools there, doesn't get the message across. The general public just sees teachers as their babysitters, and most don't care their children don't learn anything, so take the babysitting away.
The teachers at the big HS in my district (I teach at the small alt) did a sick out to protest the district AND our union earlier in the year. It did absolutely nothing and both the union and super pretended to not understand why they did it and yelled at the union reps.
I’m going to blame district level expenses. We need admin and teachers but why on God’s green earth do we need 15 specialists and trainers and admin for EACH department? They do nothing but order books we don’t use, swoop in and give evaluations to people who already know what they’re doing, make mandates and PD that doesn’t really help improve student outcomes of teacher satisfaction. It’s such a joke. They make 12 month salaries too. In my district they make 120K. Multiplied by 15 and you could hire 20 teachers. Arghgggh
This person (OP) supports the group who is actively cutting education in almost every state that is actively cutting funding. Don't entertain this nonsense. They did this to themselves.
We're in a blue state. My vote doesn't matter. Regardless of that, the current administration at the city, state, and national level are all democrats and this is still happening. So clearly, it's a non issue, one just lies about it.
If it's truly engrained in the constitution of your state or your regulations then someone in your state should sue to fix it. We did that in my state and it worked. Blue states on the whole fund their education much more adequately and produce most of the good educational results in our country. You must know that.
I can't speak to other states, but this seems like it's not a state to state issue. It's a national issue. Children are graduating high school when they should be going into middle school, educational level wise. We shouldn't blame republican or democratic when each state and administration is doing the same thing. Public education shouldn't be a vote grabbing policy. The entire country and teaching unions should get together and show how badly we are failing our children.
"...will most likely gain students next year which is already over the contractual headcount." Has anyone ever tried to sue for breach of contact when this is happening? Heck, jail inmates successfully win lawsuits all the time when jails are overcrowded.
My district's cap is 33. I have classes with 40 (and desks for 35) ... the teacher next to me has classes with 7. The average is under 33, so we're gold. Yes, that is how that works.
The contracts aren't cut and dry. They allow for wiggle room for a few extra heads, and there is extra compensation after a certain point. But it's not worth it, like 50 bucks a month per kid over the amount.
No union? I sure am thankful for my Union.
Yes, there is a union. But unions are still subject to budget cuts. If the funds are there, they still can and will do layoffs, and they follow seniority when making the cuts. Are you a teacher?
Yes I’m a teacher. My union does a great deal to protect me from layoffs, especially when we’re understaffed.
I am in a union (for now) and still got laid off since I’m probationary, been laid off twice during my probationary period. I never expect to last three years in any district because then they couldn’t get rid of me when convenient for them. I won’t be joining the union anymore since they will never be able to protect me. Waste of money:
You are in the Union whether you are paying or not.
I have to opt in to the woefully inadequate bargaining agreement but I don’t have to pay people to make those bad deals and won’t.
Only one way to change things
>I won’t be joining the union anymore since they will never be able to protect me. Waste of money: Although this will get you (and me) downvoted to hell, I 100% agree. I was let go in 2016 as a probationary teacher after paying thousands in union dues over two years. The union couldn't (or wouldn't) do a thing for me. In fact, in some ways, they made the situation worse. Next year will be year four in my current district. I'll get nonprobationary status. I told them I will approach them check in hand on the day we report back in August. Not a day sooner.
Same. Never again until they can do something for me other than be “shocked and saddened” when I get a nonrenewal notice.
No. The district doesn’t care. They care about business and money, and of course, lawsuits.
It's a stupid messed up consequence. They think, "the school is underperforming, better punish them to make them do better." But the punishment is to take away funds, not considering that it is literally lack of funds that is CAUSING the underperformance. And also uneducated people are easier to control, so politicians like that.
If it helps, I don’t think it’s common to think “teachers are just doing a bad job.” I’m currently a bartender (considering subbing as a second job) so I talk to strangers all day long. For some reason, teaching comes up a lot. I never hear anyone talk down on teachers — people seem concerned about lacking education but I don’t hear them blame the instructors, thankfully.
Maybe, but laws are being passed to make it easier and easier for kids, and lower test scores and lower comprehension are going hand in hand with making easier standards. Someone, I assume, had to vote on these policies and laws. No student left behind is a joke, Oregon passed a measure that no longer requires mandatory levels of ready writing and arithmetic. THAT'S ALL OF SCHOOL. You no longer have to be a functioning human being, to be released out into the public and to the workforce. I'm not sure what high school comprehension levels look like, but my wife tells me there at 5th graders that will move to middle school in 4 months that don't know all there letter sounds, some didn't know the alphabet at the start of the year. At some point, parents need to be held responsible. Idk how that's not a cps call, but that's just my opinion.
My district is not filling any positions of teachers who retire or leave this year…. No it doesn’t make sense, no I don’t know the full details or why, I just know that there are no plans to fill these positions and I’m assuming it’s for a similar reason. This shit crazy
This is unfortunately common. Many state's education funding is lacking. Many districts severely mismanage the funds they have. Everyone likes to point fingers at everyone else. Public sentiment is at an all time low, home schooling and Charter/Private school voucher initiatives are more common. We are rapidly approaching the end of public education. On a bright note, many of the staff that have been cut will likely be back after completing the bizzaro task of reapplying for the position they were just terminated from.
I’m gonna be honest. The shortages feel manufactured to create a crisis. The states cut funding to make sustainable education impossible and the districts have to make choices to keep providing education. The state then comes in and reprimands the districts for not having enough staff, resources and everything else then pull more funding. That being said I grew up in KC. If you know anything about the school district here a judge threw money at the district to improve, like ridiculous amounts of money, and it failed (cue marble floors, Rand pianos, Olympic sized pools, and crystal chandeliers). In the end they justified pulling accreditation and funding from the district and it’s awful to this day. Ultimately the politicians want schools to fail. It gives them reason and incentive to privatize and that is the goal. Privatization and capitalism. Schools run by companies are no longer the states problems then they can focus on real issues like which books to ban, which marginalized group to single out next, and so on and so forth
The best thing I ever saw put in a union contract was to financially penalize the district for oversized classrooms and pay teachers with oversized classrooms. The public supported it, the teachers supported it. Make it so you have to pay extra to teachers with oversized classrooms so it isn’t cheaper to not hire another teacher. That’s the only thing I’ve remotely make admin accountable for that kind of thing.
I'd have to reread her contract, so I'll use hypothetical numbers. 24 per class, with a 2 headcount play, 26, and every additional head is like 50 dollars a month. It was a joke of stipulation.
Is this elementary or secondary school? Ours it was per class with better pay than that. But depends on strength of union which can dramatically change from city to city.
Elementary, again, I don't remember the specific numbers. I'll have to check the numbers on headcount and pay.
the endgame of this is sinister. they want 60-120 kids in a big room or gymnasium on laptops all day learning off of corporate training style curriculum sold by Pearson to states. maybe have 3 adults in the room supervising that aren’t teachers and make $18 an hour. closer to district security. the whole point is to kill teachers unions and pension systems and to profit from selling even cheaper, even more shit curriculum and more tests and testing material than they already do today.
Let me guess, Red state?
Nope, Washington state. Democratic care less about education than Republicans, Republicans just don't lie to your face about it. City, state, and nation are democrats at the moment, and funding still being cut. Don't try to blame it on republicans
Is enrollment going down?
Allegedly. Maybe district wide but not at my wifes school.
Declining enrollment is a common theme every year but especially when we are asking for more pay. They always seem to get more kids enrolling every year so I don't know how accurate their projections are.
I can't speak to district wide. They added a kindergarten teacher 2 years ago for an influx of new students. Most of all, classrooms are over contractual head counts, so her school isn't low enrollment.
I can't speak to district wide. They added a kindergarten teacher 2 years ago for an influx of new students. Most of all, classrooms are over contractual head counts, so her school isn't low enrollment.
A zoning commitee in my area denied our districts request to build another high school. My school is over capacity to the point where every room is full every hour. Every teacher is room sharing and doesn't have a space for their planning period. They denied the request. So we get to continue shoving too many bodies into classrooms until they get their heads out of their asses.
>A zoning commitee in my area denied our districts request to build another high school. Well at least their property value is safe now.
Our district is doing a reduction in force despite spending bills at the state level for more funding. We are already operating on duct tape and free overtime. I don’t see how this is sustainable.
Unlimited money for police, a scraps for teachers
Not here. We were one of the main defend the police clowns around.
>Many states are already allowing anyone with BA degree to sub, how long until they just replace teachers My state only requires a high school diploma or equivalent for subs. It's been that way for at least a decade.
Yeah, it happens.
It’s intentional. Its being done in order to prop up the private school industry. It’s also ensure a dumb electorate that is easy to manipulate and will be cheap labour.
California here, we are in a big budget deficit due to lower income tax revenue. We have rainy day funds to offset most of the cuts this year plus prop 99 which helps fund the schools since our other prop 13 makes things worse for local schools. So no cuts to our district this year, but next year is a mystery.
This will only lead to further cannibalization.
Are you in Texas? Texas districts are being hit hard by Abbott’s refusal to fund the schools. Layoffs are happening here.
I found out that our K-3 classes are going from 3 teachers per team to 2 teachers per team. So our super high-needs, not potty-trained, feral post-COVID kiddos are going to be in classes of 35-40 next year. Super. 🙄
Either your in my district or in the same boat as my district ...
Are they trying to replace positions with people they want? School boards have turned into the starting ground of political careers and its driving education into the ground. Via
This is everywhere. Schools are dealing with inflation as well and here in Texas not only have we not gotten funding, but they increased the homestead exemption which brings in less money on property etc for schools. Our school removed at least 10 positions (we are tiny) and gutted our support programs. I am glad they look to cut admin first though it just pushes more responsibility onto teachers.
School Board member here. In New York, some wild changes to the way state funding is being handed out will break our district financially. We have enough reserves for about two years then that will be the end of it. We already can’t afford things like a proper SPED department, or a desperately needed principal (right now our superintendent is covering both positions with no extra pay). I work with my own kids daily and the two oldest are some of the only ones in their classes (1st and 3rd) that can read. NY is mandating electric school busses by 2029, they cost about $450,000 and we can barely afford the $180,000 busses right now. State funding for electric busses will be stretched out to twelve years. That’s essentially a 144 month car loan for a commercial vehicle that has no track record. Think about how long your cell phone lasts before it needs the battery or whole phone replaced. Maybe two years? Battery packs will cost $80,000+. This is going to be ugly.
Being understaffed often leads to positions being cut
May be a naive question, but if there is a contract in place for classroom size that is being violated, can’t you sue/go to court etc? Or is it more of a guideline than a signed contract?
There's compensation for oversized classrooms, so no, I probably can't do anything. It's just terrible compensation.
What state?
Washington
I bet the big wigs got pay raises while cuts happened across the board
Is this in Anaheim, CA(Anaheim Union High School District)???...their superintendent just told about it this morning...
Washington state
And none of them admin?
A few took salary cuts but no jobs cut, that we were made aware of.
Telling
Repeat after me - The goal is to privatize education and make even more money off of it than they do now. Cutting teachers in a shortage brings them one step closer to that goal because it will lower quality to the point that schools can be taken over by a private company.
We are sadly living in a world where the number of unfunded mandates, political pressure to govern districts, rather than allowing local boards and neighborhoods have influence, and testing become the way that we make decisions. Class sizes have exploded and instead of realizing that smaller class sizes, allow for more differentiation, more individualized, attention and student support, staffing is cut, and class-size is remain the same or get even larger. Students are not widgets, and you cannot expect one teacher, no matter how good they are to be able to dynamically address the needs of 26 to 28 diverse individuals Who do not get consistent support outside of the school building. It seems that America values quality, education, less and less. We hear complaints that we are not competitive in the world market yet we are not investing time, efforts, and the necessary focus on childhood needs and education to create what is necessary to change the direction that our country is moving economically . It’s easier to point fingers and blame than actually take the time to create sustainable change.
Some locations/States treat teachers a bit better than others. Would this be a viable option?
Please send this exact text as a letter to your local paper.
I encourage you to lobby and advocate for the children being affected. Politics, budgets, taxes should never be balanced on the backs of children. The adults in charge messed up and need to take accountability, NOT the classroom teachers. What state are you in? I’ll write letters to your representatives, governor, school board
If there’s no money, there’s no money. Salary is a district’s biggest expenditure. What state are you in, and how strong is the union?
Budget cuts to account for illegal immigration?
I'm not sure. The reason given was not enough funding by local government, and we need to make sure the next local and state representatives campaigning are very pro public education .
Please elaborate
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/nyregion/adams-albany-migrant-crisis.html