Trying Times

Since the state legislature revealed their proposed budget cuts I've been to two emergency union meetings.  I don't like the feeling I get when I walk away from them.  It's a very us vs. them attitude.   While I do believe that we have some dead wood that needs to be cut from the district office staff I have never gotten the feeling from our board members and the superintendent that "they" are out to screw the teachers to save themselves.  

Our district has a deep hole, a $4,000,000.00 hole to fill. Cutting programs will not do it all.  There will have to be staff cuts too.  Preliminary figures indicate that 30-40 teachers out of 300 will be let go.  I've been here for 20 years so I know I will have a job, but what concerns me is who will I be teaching with?  Two of my fourth grade teammates are in their second year of teaching, and my other teammate only has five years of experience.  It's likely that I might have a whole new team of people who have never taught 4th grade before working with me.  Additionally I will probably have 30+ children in my room.  I haven't had that many students since Noah's group was in fourth grade (and that was an unusually large group).  Last year I had 25 kids all year, and this year I only have 20.

My pay will at best be frozen but probably cut.  Forrest is likely to take a pay cut too.  We were hoping to take one last big vacation with the kids before Alyssa's senior year since it will probably be the last one we all take together, and that's looking less likely now.

I chuckled at an article I read about our new education secretary.  He was lecturing high school students in Denver about competition with the rest of the world.  He told the students that they need to be in school six days a week 11 months of the year.  Has this man been reading the papers lately?  Every district in the nation is cutting staff, shortening the school year, and/or cutting programs to stay in operation.  Where does he think the money is going to come from to institute his changes? We will receive some stimulus money, but it comes with strings attached, and most of it will go to special education or english as a second language programs.

OK, I'm done ranting now.  I'll climb down off my soapbox. But maybe now that I've written my concerns down somewhere I'll be able to sleep tonight.

On  more positive note, Noah's baseball team won last night 17-3.  Noah pitched a no-hitter for four innings before he ran out of his weekly allotment of pitches.

Alyssa turns in her Senior Project proposal today.