These are difficult times for public education. As school districts struggle to choose where to whittle and whack next, it’s easy to suggest that there are simple ways to achieve savings and reduce costs.
What’s troubling, however, is the misleading and sometimes inaccurate information that some folks are using to disparage our schools and educators.
Public schools’ mission is teaching and learning. Our success is measured by the opportunities that we create for our students, both in our classrooms today and later in life.
Throughout these lean economic times brought on by the Great Recession, the Eugene School District has worked steadily to keep cuts away from the classroom as much as possible. Now, facing a $21.7 million budget shortfall, we can no longer avoid further reductions to our teaching staff and the resulting increase in class sizes.
We continue to put the needs of students first and to maintain high academic expectations. We are focused and clear about our priorities. We have made hard decisions to let go of valued programs so that all students have the educational opportunities that they need to be successful. This is not, and will not be, easy for students, parents, staff or our community.
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Amen to that. I also cannot think of teachers I know who entered the field because of “high pay” expectations. Even in states or regions where they are higher paid, the costs of living are higher too.
It would behoove our governor (and our other cut-spending-at-all-personal-costs politicos) to remember that teachers (as well as some other “public” employees) “make more on average” than the majority of Wisconsinites in part because they have far more higher education than the majority of Wisconsinites. This advanced coursework was also, in most cases, paid for by the current teachers themselves, who are still paying of tens of thousands of dollars in student loans as a result. Teachers also have to take further education consistently to stay up-to-date, and ever-fewer districts provide any help in paying for continuing ed, because of the cuts already absorbed in our districts over the past ten-plus years (in trying to keep the cuts as far away from students as possible).