Kids, Not Cuts
Speaker of the House, John Boehner, wants to extend George W. Bush’s break to the 1% of America, but that’s exactly what will increase the wealth gap we see in schools. In January of next year there will $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts to reduce the deficit over 10 years.What do I mean by the wealth gap in schools? Let me explain..
When Weren’t There Budget Cuts to Teachers? Ever Since I Can Remember…
The first year of teaching for me was a tough one. Illinois had just done a massive early-out retirement and jobs were available. I was offered a job at my first job fair after college graduation. At the time, I had 2 children at home and had gotten married and pregnant within that first year while teaching high school sophomores and seniors. I spent the better part of the year wondering what I had gotten myself into. All of my hubris and optimism about teaching went out the door when bureaucratic policies and cuts seemed to bury every effort I strained to carry out. The first time I picked up my paycheck I walked back up the stairs to my office, opened it up, and cried. I tirelessly wrote lesson plans and graded papers and fretted about my evaluation of those efforts for this? It couldn’t be right.
That was 19 years ago and, since then, I began a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction and abandoned that for one in educational administration. As a single mother trying to hang on to what little my profession afforded me, it was working out until I lost my
