Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Starving The Schools Of The 99% | OurFuture.org

Starving The Schools Of The 99% | OurFuture.org:

Starving The Schools Of The 99%

Last week's release of the report Staving America's Schools: How Budget Cuts and Policy Mandates Are Hurting Our Nation's Students set the stage for this week's chorus line calling for the US Senate to pass a bill to fund teachers' jobs across the country.

We know school districts are laying-off teachers by the thousands, and we know firing teachers reinforces all the things that are bad for the future of our children and our country: cutting early childhood education, increasing class sizes, narrowing curriculum, and shutting down programs and services that individualize the school experience to different student interests and abilities.

This week, Media Matters reminded us that Senate is about to vote on the President's plan to "prevent teacher layoffs and get more teachers back in our schools -- 400,000 jobs." Right on cue, Think Progress pointed out that the choice our Senators face is to decide whether they are for "hundreds of thousands of American jobs or are they for letting millionaire and billionaires get away without paying their fair share."