According to California law, if a public school district cannot guarantee a teacher a job in the next school year, that district must inform the teacher by March 15, which is this coming Saturday.
Thousands of teachers are getting letters right now that say they're being cut loose. This is because $4.4 Billion dollars are being cut from the schools. I know I should care about Mississippi but this is a tragedy that's happening to people right now. It's going to affect children.
I have some links for you to read about it for yourself. I have copied a post I wrote recently and included it; I'm sorry but I just can't write about it again. This is how public education gets destroyed.
Some links:
From the LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/...
About cuts to the California State University system:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Campus police officers, nurses and Vice Principals are being cut, too:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/...
From a collaboration of ethnic news organizations:
http://news.newamericamedia.org/...
With a dead-on flash animation:
http://www.cta.org/...
What does all this mean? My post and I'm sorry if I'm breaking a rule or something by copying myself:
California law forces school districts that cannot guarantee jobs to teachers to let them know by March 15, which is this Saturday.
Orange County school districts are going to cut loose 1500 teachers alone. My school district, Santa Ana, is cutting loose over 500 teachers.
This isn't Iraq. This isn't FISA. This isn't racism on the campaign trail nor a politician spending thousands of dollars on prostitutes.
Nobody in the Clinton or Obama campaigns gives a rat's ass right now about California because the primary's over and the vote certified. Both campaigns have websites that blather about No Child Left Behind (Congress is scared to change it. Period.), recruiting new teachers (How? How can we retain teachers if they have no reason to believe they should put down any roots?), retaining teachers (Thanks for working here this year. Where are you thinking of working next year?), raising teacher salaries and merit pay (Where the hell is that money supposed to come from? Where is my cost-of-living percentage? Why can outside companies get big contracts for 'consulting' but I can't get paid to tutor after school? As a matter of fact, why does my district pay a few hundred thousand dollars to some outside company for 'benchmark' tests when I'd be willing to write a Standards-based test for, oh, a couple hundred dollars and I wouldn't screw up the answers, either...).
I don't give a crap about how many teachers will be hired back when they figure out how much money will be available due to retirements. Somebody won't be back and they people who are back will be shuffled through the district, one at a time, so that there is no continuity.
And it's not just teachers. The classified workers are getting cut, too. Elementary school Principals are being told to prepare themselves to be Principal at two sites at once.
And let's get this straight: all of these people are middle class. Cut their jobs and they're not going to be spending this summer. If they can't find a job, they'll be filing for benefits this fall. They're not going to have health care. Everybody, every business, that depends on teachers spending pretty damn close to every penny they're paid each paycheck will get screwed, too.
I love the kids. This situation is so bad for the adults that I know if I think about the kids, I'll weep.