I work for Los Angeles Unified School District. The third largest school district in the nation with a slue of financial and educational faults. All the major newspapers and news stations have been covering the stories of health care cuts and mid-year teacher layoffs that the superintendent plans to do to stabilize the financial crisis from years of district over spending. It frightens me that people stand by and watch a big business, such as LAUSD, destroy the people from the bottom. In theory, they got themselves in a bind and the first place they take away from is the children and the schools. LAUSD owns a TV news station which only airs district meetings that costs $64 million a year, they own and run several (15) small local district buildings at 200+ million in yearly costs, and they paid superintendent Brewer $540 thousand to leave before his contract was up (there is much more to list but you'd be reading this all day). To compensate for their overspending the Big Wigs are threatening to make teachers pay $130 a month in HMO health care benefits and do a mid-year layoff of all 2,600 probationary teachers (which includes me) making class sizes increase to 25:1 (now is it 20:1 student-teacher ratio). With special permission from Arnold the 25:1 ratio WILL be carried through LAUSD and most likely the other California schools. The UTLA (United Teachers of Los Angeles) held a rally last Thursday in downtown Los Angeles. Where 10,000 teachers, staff, parents and community members marched from Pershing Square to Arnold's LA office. I am not going to stand by while my job and my students rights to a good education get ripped away. That is why Tucker and I joined those dedicated teachers and parents.
If you would like more information visit the CTA website or the UTLA website.
1 comment:
Way to go! If they cut good teachers like you they don't know what they are doing. I agree, education should be one of the LAST things to be cut.
Post a Comment