From AZCentral.com -
The Scottsdale school board laid off almost 250 teachers, administrators and staff during an emotional board meeting Tuesday that brought some administrators and board members to tears.
It wasn't just Scottsdale losing teachers and other educators, though. Others include -
Litchfield Elementary - 78
Gilbert - more than 400
Tucson - 600
Apache Junction - 49
Mesa - 500
Flagstaff - 300+
There are more, too many more, but you get the point.
There will be *many* more notices going out in the next week or so.
Too reiterate something that has been said before this - votes have consequences.
I attended two rallies at the state capitol in support of education in AZ. Some of the teachers in attendance told me that they were Republicans.
I told them that if this year didn't convince them to give the Democrats a chance, it should at least convince them to become more active Republicans.
By doing so, they would be in a better position to make sure that their party produces candidates who are more interested in protecting the interests of their constituents than they are in imposing an extremist ideology on the state.
3 comments:
Thousands you say huh?
5,500 people in the construction industry lost their jobs back in February 2009. Who is going to sob over their lost jobs?
The fact is that the current recession causes problems for everyone, not just government school teachers.
Thane,
You're right about the construction layoffs, which is why we need to extend unemployment benefits.
The difference is that when construction workers get laid off it's because there are not enough homebuyers-- in other words they are not working because the work isn't there for them to do (other than, of course, infrastructure projects that do need to get done, but the stimulus only can go so far. Teachers, on the other hand, do have work that needs to be done. Instead those who remain will face more crowding in the classrooms and the kids will have less in the way of course offerings they can take. In other words, when teachers get laid off my kids suffer for it.
And no, I'm not willing to sacrifice my kids for more tax cuts (as some in the legislature are now proposing once more.)
Whether it is teachers or construction workers the problem in the end is that Arizona doesn't have a pool of wealth large enough to pay for any more houses or pay for for all of the current staff of government employed teachers.
As for government unemployment benefits, the 50 states are not in a great position to maintain much less increase them. The federal government is borrowing money to backstop that program but who is going to pay back those borrowed funds? Government is borrowing too much as well as spending too much on both the state and federal level. The problem isn't insufficient borrowing and spending, the problem is overspending and overborrowing.
The boom in overall spending and consumption has reached a bust. The economy is telling anybody who is listening to spend less and that includes government schools.
Neither you nor I nor the government can spend its way into prosperity.
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