Cuts, Cuts, Cuts

Firstly, apologies for not posting in a while. Things have been insane as of late, and are just now starting to calm down a bit.

Well, it's no secret that our economy has been insane lately. And it's definitely no secret that everybody is feeling the squeeze. Well, as you know I do my best to try and keep things anonymous as far as exactly where I work so that I don't name names and give too many specifics. I feel I've done pretty well. This will probably be the most specifics that I give.

I have mentioned, in previous posts, that I currently work in New Mexico, in Albuquerque to be exact. Well, I work for the Albuquerque Public School district which is feeling the strain of budget cuts in a rather insanely huge fashion. My mother works at my old high school in the English Resource Center, and has shared with me that her district is having to cut $13 million. A healthy amount, but one that isn't going to find major, and deep cuts. I tell you this as a means of comparison. We've been told, since December, that cuts were coming to APS, but we weren't certain of how much until recently. $43 million dollars....Let me say that again, 43 MILLION DOLLARS!!! The worst part of all of this isn't that we aren't getting 43 million less in funding, it's that about 13 - 20 million dollars of this is from mismanagement of funding from previous years. That means our cuts could have been lower, this means that fewer teachers would be out of work, this means that class sizes might not be so crazy next year; but no, the people that are overpaid to make sure stuff like this doesn't happen, didn't do such a great job.

The bottom line of this is that they are expecting to lay off about 600 teachers, and won't refill the positions of those teachers who are retiring or leaving the district. So that ends up being about 1200 fewer teachers in the district next year. Obviously this is a result of a larger problem of how people view education and teachers in general. But the only response I have to this, because I know it isn't just New Mexico feeling this, is don't complain when your students aren't as prepared as you were. People don't want to pay the extra taxes to help fund the schools, but they want the schools to be better. It doesn't happen for free folks, and the ones that lose in the long run, are your kids.

Just food for thought.