This Senate budget short-changes school kids by taking hundreds of millions of dollars out our public schools and by firing 7,400 teacher assistants (TAs).
Senator Josh Stein of Wake County called the education budget "a shell game." "You all fired thousands of TAs last year," Stein said on the floor of the Senate to his Republican colleagues, "and of those you didn't fire, you're firing half of the remaining ones this year. This budget is not about paying teachers a salary that reflects the importance of their work. This budget is trying to cloak your political vulnerability at the expense of our school kids."
The "political vulnerability" that Stein referred to is the wave of anger that is still sweeping through the ranks of public school employees. Teachers better not let them get away with it.
Furthermore, the Senate budget strips 15,000 blind, disabled, and elderly North Carolinians of their health insurance, i.e., Medicaid. There's Christian charity for you! The brain staggers at the sheer cruelty of it.
The Republicans are making these cuts because of the choices they made last year that created a $500 million hole in this year's budget -- a choice to fund tax giveaways to the very wealthy and to large out-of-state corporations.
Fiscal management? Not so much.
The social contract? Shredded into confetti.
Senator Dan Soucek? The nodding "yes" boy who does as he's told.
5 comments:
I just stuns me how much damage they have done to our great State, and in such a short period of time!!
Has anyone in the NCGA talked to teachers? MANY are doing what they can to get out while they can. NCGOP loathes the educational system - and it seems from their actions they are intent on destroying it… and the state.
What a position to be in: take the money and set yourself up for a personal or political firing, or, if you are a high school teacher, take the money while your elementary colleagues lose most of their help and kids suffer (and those kids will be their responsibility later). Regardless, Berger, Soucek, et al. will say to those principled teachers that they refused a very good offer, so they deserve to not have raises.
Without saying anything about the political hardball being played against the state and the attorney general's office, university faculty will get no raises for the sixth straight year.
That woman in Blowing Rock didn't yell hard enough, unfortunately.
Meanwhile we are still waiting for those trickle down effects from the massive tax cuts the rich got, and the business breaks that were supposed to create jobs. As has been noted, the color of trickledown is p-yellow.
59+8The left seems to be unaware that a budget is setting priorities for the allocation of scarce resources. When teachers get a huge raise, some other budget priorities are cut. You just can't have it both ways.
If "those principled teachers" refuse a very good offer, they can find some solace in the knowledge that there will be more funds available for teachers' aides.
BTW, those elementary school teachers will get the same raises as HS teachers. As with so many other areas of our economy, higher pay often means extra responsibilities.
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