First, The Bad News ...

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judi ceme terpercayaI was listening to NPR yesterday as I drove home from UConn, and I tuned in to the tail end of an interview with a woman who was talking about positive economic news. The thrust of her interview was that positive economic news does exist, even in this economy, and that it is important to report it so that people’s spirits don’t become totally depressed. The interviewer even gave a plug to websites like the GoodNewsNetwork and PositiveEconomicNews for taking the time to find nuggets of hopefulness among all the gloom and doom that has dominated the news since the fall. And listening to this I got myself thinking that this week when I write my column I would try to be positive and write about good news.

But it’s so hard …

I find it hard when I know that Governor Rell has proposed eliminating state funding for the CWP-Fairfield, or that she has proposed HB 6388, which would strip teachers of their collective bargaining rights. These rights date back to the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, but were given teeth in Connecticut with the 1982 Educational Enhancement Act, but not before teacher strikes in 1978. Think about that. No collective bargaining rights. Boards of education in every town would be free to cut pay, increase class size, even alter medical benefits, and teachers and their unions would have no legal right to do a thing for themselves or their students. How long till we found teachers on strike again? Fortunately, the CEA and AFT have aggressively campaigned against the bill, and it looks like it will fail, but I remain angry that Rell would even propose such a thing. She seems patently hostile to teachers and education.

I also find myself angry at school boards looking for 0% or even negative increase budgets for the coming fiscal year, which would mean layoffs and kegiatan elimination everywhere. To the average tax payer a 0% increase sound like a maintenance budget, but it isn’t. A maintenance budget requires approximately a 3-4% increase just to meet cost increases for existing programs and to accommodate contractual pay increases for all employees. I know that in my wife’s district the board of ed maintains that a negative increase is reasonable considering the educational stimulus money that will be received from the federal government. What they are neglecting to note, however, is that the stimulus funds are earmarked for very specific programs, so any budget that comes in under a 3-4% increase will result in school districts using federal dollars to expand certain programs at the same time that cuts in state and local funds will require the elimination of other programs, teachers, and staff.

This type of scenario was made very salient for me this past Tuesday. I was in Hartford at their central office discussing professional development for one of the eleven new schools that are being created with money from the Sheff v. O’Neil case. I read in the Hartford Courant the following day that hours after I had spoken with the superintendent outside his office, he had to make an announcement of planned cuts and layoffs at existing schools. How terribly ironic. Of course the superintendent does not want to have to make such an announcement, and it certainly seems unfair considering there is money to build new schools and train new teachers, but as with the federal stimulus money, the Sheff money can only be spent in certain ways and cannot be used to prevent layoffs and kegiatan eliminations at other schools. As seems to be too often the case, elected officials and not educators themselves (never mind students or their parents) are making school policy.

But I promised myself that I would write something positive.

I guess I would have to concede that I am pleased that President Obama signed the bill reauthorizing funding for the National Writing Project for 2009-10, including an increase of $710,000. This bodes well for us all when site directors and Teacher-Consultants converge upon Washington, DC April 1-3 for the NWP Spring Meeting and the lobbying of our legislators for NWP reauthorization for 2010-11. Hopefully during the next four or eight years the NWP won’t have to engage in an annual fight to prevent the elimination of the NWP’s federal funding.

I am happy that even in the current economy the CWP has continued to contract with schools and school districts for professional development, that the funding from the Aetna Chair of Writing holds steady, and that the English Department plans no additional cuts to the CWP’s operational budget, nor has there been any more talk of eliminating our graduate assistant. From my end, it looks as if things are actually stabilizing. Hopefully soon I can go back to worrying about, well, anything other than finances.

Speaking of which, my son is five now, and a week or so ago I took him to see the school he will be attending, and to meet his likely future teacher. Amy and I were concerned because he’s a pretty shy kid and the school will be much bigger and more crowded than anything he’s been used to, but he was excited, even elated, to walk the halls and see all the kids. I practically had to drag him from the classroom once the visit was over. He can’t wait to begin, and keeps asking me when his first day will be and how soon his next birthday will come. The one thing he’s going to be disappointed about, however, is that he will not be riding the school bus, which he has been eager to do ever since he went to day camp last summer and saw some of the campers arriving on the big yellow buses. See, we live two doors from the school, so he’ll be a walker, like I was back in elementary school. But it’s just as well; they’ll probably be eliminating the funds for the buses next. Sorry, I just couldn’t maintain the positivity any longer.