Wake up and smell the school cuts
Silicon Valley Education Foundation - Forgive Patty Koel if she rants for a moment; she has a lot to say, and most of it is dire. “The last few years have been the most severe in terms of cuts that have entered into the classroom,” said the president of the PTA Council in Millbrae, a small community south of San Francisco. ”Last year we increased the class size of our kindergarten through third grade by 50 percent, from 20 kids per class to 30 kids per class. This year we’ve completely eliminated five whole days from our school year. The school days are shorter; we have lost the dean of students at our Taylor Middle School; we no longer have a director of curriculum; we don’t have money to do staff development training for our teachers; we have reduced access to many of our programs, including libraries, technology, music, summer school, and GATE education; and our teachers simply don’t have the support that they need for the large class sizes without the instructional aides because they’ve been laid off as well.”
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