Published January 13th, 2011
This article quickly caught my attention as budget cuts and what they may look like next year are all the hype in Sheridan School District, I currently work. The article made some good, yet fairly obvious points:
1) Budget reductions are causing deep cuts in education programs around the country. In Broward County, Florida they laid off 555 teachers last year. That is hard for me to imagine coming from a district with maybe 40 teachers total, grades K-12. At this level, losing one teacher can sometimes mean cutting a whole program, like music.
2) "Recessions typically have a long tail that effects school budgets well after other sections of the economy have recovered." Just because the economic recession we've been in seems to be on the upswing, doesn't mean school budgets will be improving soon. It will take some time for the money to filter its way down into the schools. Some schools are facing "funding cliffs". Even if some districts have found a way to squeeze some extra money into the budget, that money will eventually run out and the district will then have to make some hard decisions about what to cut. One example is furloughs. They do not do anything for the expenditure gap in the future. A more permanent solution needs to be found.
3) One possible solution to budget issues carries over into policy issues. The controversial topic of teacher pay for performance rises again. The key to making this system effective and add up to a cost savings requires teachers to not only receive extra money for excellent work, but less money for poor performances. Personally, I think this model would be a hard fought battle between school districts and teacher unions. I'm also very skeptical in general of teacher pay for performance. There are too many variables open to personal interpretations and very little safety or recourse for those considered to be low performers.
I wish our society would place a greater value on education and show that support with dollars. It greatly concerns me to imagine my 15 co-workers at Sheridan High School and think that one person may not be here next year. To cut one person from the English department would mean there would be only one English teacher left for 260 students. It's hard to imagine. But yet, that is reality.
There is a lot of interesting information in this detailed article about funding problems for schools in our current recession. The tone of many of the quotes from people like Arne Duncan and Frederick W. Hess (the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute) really irk me, maybe because of all my years of being involved with teacher unions. Their comments just seemed harsh and insensitive to me. Maybe what they say is true, but it's not their job that's on the line.
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