State of Emergency
By Dina Martin
"We haven’t had a GATE [Gifted and Talented Education] program since 2008.Class sizes in K-3 have increased to 25 students per class and will be going up to 30 next year. We haven’t had any field trips since 2008. We no longer have assemblies. We have no funding for after-school tutoring. Our intervention aides have been cut. Our site office staff has been cut . Maintenance has cut back. We haven’t had any furniture replaced for the past several years. And our library books are wearing out."
This is how fifth-grade teacher Danielle Stigthans describes the impact of budget cuts on Kendrick Elementary in Bakersfield. That’s why Stigthans, co-president of the Greenfield Educators Association, will be urging the 400 members of her chapter to participate in CTA’s “State of Emergency” week of action May 9-13.
Greenfield is not alone. School districts throughout California are eroding in all sorts of ways. It’s going on three years that California’s schools have been drained of the resources they need to carry on. In that
