Tonight, at my son's school they had their annual open house. My wife and I got to see our son's projects, writings, and see his progress amongst his classmates. We also found out that his teacher was handed a pink-slip last Friday. Sixty-four teachers within the district received the very same pink-slip as my son's first grade teacher.
Needless to say, my wife and I were stunned.
Now, I've been quite vocal over the years about how i felt that the teachers union here in Southern California is one of the most despicable. How it strong arms local and federal legislature, districts, cradles the inept, and turns a blind-eye to the feeble minded educators who pontificate their importance as they continue to teach from the same syllabus year after year after year after year after year.
I agree with President Obama that we should reward excellence in teaching with extra pay and quickly remove those who have failed our children, our schools, and our future. The teachers union should use this as their battle cry but instead they're lobbying heavily against it.
I live in Southern California. Hollywood is just over the hill and Silicon Valley is just up the road. Billions of dollars are spent, invested, developed in these two locations alone, on a yearly basis. My son's teacher has been teaching full time for less than five years. She got her education, her California certification, and moved her way up through the system. Before my son entered her class on that first day of school, other teachers and parents expressed to my wife and I in such reverence regarding my son's teacher that I thought that perhaps my son was in for a very challenging year. Now, more than half way through the school year, my son is doing well and very eager to go to school, and my wife and I think his teacher is just fantastic.
My son's teacher is from India. India, I understand is a very poor country. According to the CIA World Factbook, India is ranked 12th in their gross domestic product index. The United States is number one at 14,330,000 (millions of USD) while India is at 1,237,000(millions of USD) with theirs. I mention this because India, a comparatively poor country, spends twenty times more on education than the United States. How can this be?
Someone needs to explain to me why we give a shit about what Brittney Spears is flashing on stage, who Kanye West insulted today, or the convoluted story-line to the television show LOST when our politicians are squandering, pilfering, or losing our educational tax dollars, all the while telling us that education is at the top of their political platform.
Someone needs to explain to me why we have allowed the teachers union to bully and lie while allowing the bad teachers to take refuge in tenure as the good ones get routinely oppressed and forced to toe the line.
As I've stated before, I support our president when he states that teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests, and he'll improve the assessments used to track student progress to measure their readiness for college. Or his comprehensive "zero to Five" plan that'll provide critical support to young kids and their parents. And the one I'm looking forward to hearing more about is the creation of the new American Opportunity Tax Credit worth four-thousand in exchange for community service.
Now, I'm not writing this to propagandize our presidents agenda. It just happens to be one that I look forward to its fruition.
But back to my main topic, my son attends a public school here in California, and I think all Californians need to speak out against Governor Schwarzenegger's budget cuts and pressure him and the Legislature to come up with solutions to the revenue problem that do not harm our kids.
Decisions made in Sacramento in the coming months will impact our schools. California has a centralized system for funding public education. The Governor and the Legislature, not local school boards, determine the amount of property taxes and state aid each school district receives. This is why even when property taxes increase, our schools do not necessarily benefit.
California ranks 47th in the nation in spending per student when accounting for regional cost differences, spending almost two-thousand dollars less per student than the national average. Louisiana, Mississippi, and West Virginia all out rank California. And yet, none of those states have Hollywood, Disneyland, Sea World, or Silicon Valley.
What does all this mean? The millions of kids in California publics schools attend some of the most crowded classrooms, have the fewest counselors, and librarians in the nation. And last August Governor Schwarzenegger signed a budget he called responsible, claiming that state expenditures are excessive, cutting billions from K-12 education to balance the budget. So, according to our governor, increasing class size is responsible.
When Schwarzenegger took office, he reduced the vehicle license fee. That created an annual four-billion dollar hole in the budget...about the same he seeks to cut from education.
Governor Schwarzenegger once promised voters he would protect California's commitment to education funding. California public schools are the only state-funded agency that depends upon car washes, bake sales, and magazine subscription drives to function. Yet, Schwarzenegger's call in 2008 to be the Year of Education became a cruel joke.
The Schwarzenegger household will be unaffected by the budget cuts. His kids attend private schools that charge over twenty-five thousand dollars a year in tuition. In my school district, spending per student in 2007 was $5,916.
Our society will not flourish if only the children of the rich attend schools that offer quality teaching in small classrooms, music and art, foreign languages, sports, the access to technology, and well stocked libraries. California's future depends on our public schools receiving the resources necessary to succeed.
Our kids, and our teachers should be any states governments first priority, not their last.
Also, kids should not be impacted by the mistakes brought on by irresponsible spending.
Again, needless to say, my wife and I are stunned.