Schools in State of Emergency

As you have most certainly heard, our state public schools are facing great budgetary challenges. It seems that just as the economy is picking up for so many, it remains in a conundrum for schools, teachers, and by default, students.

If you have children in school who have not been affected by the budget crisis, thank your teachers and school administrators for doing such an incredible job masking the state of their school budgets from their families and students.

Unfortunately, this masking will become nearly impossible under the budgetary restraints schools are facing for the upcoming school year. The educational opportunities of an entire generation of students, your children, are at stake. Although the data seems unfathomable, there is hope.

In this season of Teacher Appreciation Week, the best gift you can give is support in this time of crisis.

The current state of the budget in California schools

• $20 billion was cut in the last three years, equaling $3,000 per student.
• $2-$4 billion more cuts are scheduled for next year.
• More than 30,000 educators have been laid off, with 20,000 more facing layoffs at the end of this year.
• Furlough days have decreased learning opportunities. Only 42 percent of schools are still at the 1998 national standard of 180 school days, with most districts forced to take furlough days. The Sacramento Bee reported that up to 20 furlough days statewide, or a four-day school week, is a serious option for next year.
• Class sizes soar at all levels, K-12 through university.
• Limited class choices and availability in higher education levels slow graduation timelines.
• College tuition has increased 200 percent.
• California, the eighth-largest economy in the world, ranks 43rd in the nation in education funding and last in numbers of school councilors, librarians, and nurses per student.
• Community colleges turned away 140,000 students last school year and may turn away twice as many next year. This may be the most significant new impact. Many students rely on the community college route to gain access to the next level in higher education. Community colleges have long been a life-changing path for students who could not compete academically in the rigorous and over-crowded field of university applicants.

What you can do to help

• Make a phone call. In honor of Teacher Appreciation Day, call your legislators on behalf of your child’s teacher, a teacher who made a difference in your child’s life, or a teacher who changed your own life. You can also e-mail your legislators. Let them know how much you support and appreciate about your school and your teachers.
• Make bold suggestions. We are at a point in time when no suggestion is a bad one. To solve difficult problems, we need out-of-the-box thinking. Contact your legislators with your ideas for how to help schools. This is a dire time for our legislators, a time when they should feel very compelled to listen to new ideas. Go for it! What can you lose?
• Share the budget reality with your child. Children want to help, and teaching them about finances early is a great way to keep them fiscally sound in the future. It is also never too soon to teach children to understand where the materials in their life come from and that they are not unlimited. Let them know that the paper, pencils, paint, soap, toilet paper, paper towels, play equipment, books, etc., come at a cost and that conserving and respecting such things is important to helping the school be successful. More importantly, you will in turn be teaching your child how to be a responsible consumer and help the environment!  
• Support your school’s PTA. My school is blessed to have an incredible PTA, without which, the budget impact would be felt much stronger at the classroom level than it is. By supporting your PTA, you can help limit the impact on your child the mess at the top is creating. Our children should not suffer in the hands of politics and your school and classroom support is the best way to shield them from the blows.   

I love my job and what I do. To be a good teacher, you must love it, as it is an incredibly challenging and emotionally charged profession. Yet the political atmosphere presently surrounding education is a daunting reality for all teachers and I sincerely question whether or not I would have become a teacher if I were graduating from school today.

My decision to become a teacher came as a shock to my parents and university professors who expected that I would pursue the doctoral route in law or psychology. But a wonderful teacher my last semester of college changed my course and gave me permission to pursue my dream of teaching. It is a decision I have rarely looked back upon, but I entered the field in a much friendlier political and financial climate.

Today, I fear the upcoming best and brightest will shy away from teaching to pursue careers with fewer challenges and more pay-offs. If we want to improve the quality of our education system, we need to rebuild teaching as a profession to be proud of, and the current budget realities make this hard to do.  

Thank you for supporting your teachers. It is truly the love of our students, the growth and change we see in them on a daily basis, and the support of their parents that make this job a delight.

For more details on the budget impact on schools, click here.