To fix schools, adults need to grow up
If only life were like the elementary school on the "South Park" cartoon.
On the TV show, the wacky adults mess up, only to have life bounce back with the magic of animation.
But fixing education for children in Orange County and the rest of California is far more challenging. It's time for adults to get real.
Some 1,500 teaching positions were eliminated last year in Orange County. In March, an additional 2,219 layoff notices went out to local teachers and other educators in an effort to meet a combined $365.3 million projected deficit for the 2010-11 school year.
It's as if we expect life to somehow just get better in the next episode.
If you doubt we may be heading into a crisis consider California had the second highest student-teacher ratio (20.8 to 1) in the nation in 2007, the latest report by the federal National Center for Education Statistics. And that was before the layoffs.
We're also seeing cuts in music, art, PE and vocational education. Even our legislators agree we've cut to the bone.
Looking for solutions – or at least some hope – I'm visiting with teachers, legislators, school boards and parents. Today, we're hearing from teachers. Why are teachers first? Because they're in the trenches. Legislators are next.
In past years, unions claimed they had solutions. This year is different.
To be sure, the educators had a few suggestions. Take money out of cash reserves, for one. But they admitted the sum wasn't much when compared with what is needed to restore education to what it was just