Thursday, May 1, 2008

Worrying Times...

Due to the budget cuts that effecting everywhere thanks to the housing issues and the recession (especially our area, due to an ill-advised tax cut that is going to cost us our shirts, instead of save us thousands as they promised), our school had a special meeting today.

In it, we learned that we have to cut our budget for next year. To the tune of about $500,000.

I'm sorry, but that's a lot of money.

And since most of the money needs to come out of the personnel budget, that's a heck of a lot of teachers that will not have a job next year.

This makes me nervous.

I am a good teacher. I receive good reports. I have areas I need to work on, but who doesn't? I shouldn't have to worry about losing my job, especially since it's not like we have less students. We are actually getting more students.

We have and awesome administration, and they have been very honest with all of us, and told us how they will tell the people who will need to look for a new job immediately, so they have the greatest opportunity to get a new position somewhere else.

I am not one of the teachers who will not be coming back, and I am very, very grateful.

Still, it's an absolute shame that education should be so underfunded. None of our good teachers should have to find a new job in a new profession, or a new state even, when the number of students hasn't changed and they are good teachers, not mediocre teachers.

I am very sad as I hear about who is not coming back to various schools. It makes me very nervous, even if I am good for this coming year, what happens if more cuts are coming our way? Then it will be even worse, and more teachers will be "released" or reassigned.

I really hope something very positive happens very soon, and this will all be just a bad memory.

I really, really don't want to do another job interview.

2 comments:

Nikki said...

How do "They" justify having less teachers with the same amount or more students? What are the laws as far as numbers go? Here in Texas, it's 22 to 1 from K through 4th grade. Then people don't really talk about the limit from 5th grade through high school. They whisper about it. One year I had 34- 35 students while my friend who teaches 2nd grade at the same school had 16. Yeah, I just had a hot flash thinking about it.
My daughter teaches 9th grade Honors Biology and one class has 22 students and one has 35 students. So the question remains. How will they justify letting a bunch of teachers go if the students numbers remain the same?
I'm just sayin'.

Language Arts Lady said...

Where I am, we have VERY SPECIFIC rules about how many kids per classroom is allowed, but they are slowly reducing it year by year. So, it should be that in grades K-3 only 18 students, 4-8 only 22, and 9-12 only 25.

However, it's not really working out that way. The money for the extra teachers is supposed to come from the state, but apparently they have forgotten that.

Last year, we had huge class sizes, with my smallest being 22, and my largest being 38. I'm sorry, but 38 is just TOO MANY 12-year-olds... you spend much of your time attempting to get them to stop talking and focus, instead of actual teaching.

Anyway, I agree. They need the same number of teachers, and in my district at least, the numbers are rising constantly, so I'm not sure what they'll do.