“No More Pencils No More Books … Out For Summer Out Till Fall We Might Not Come Back At All”

Jejak PandaSelamat Membaca Di Blog Kesayangan Anda
bandarqI’m not talking about Alice Cooper or the movement toward digital literacy here. No, I’m talking about Governor Rell’s announcement that she is freezing “all nonessential state purchases for the next four months—including pens [and] paper.”

Wednesday’s Hartford Courant reported that Governor Rell has frozen spending on everything from cleaning products for restrooms and service contracts for office machines to pens, paper, and paperclips. This freeze will remain for the next four months, or until the end of the fiscal and school year. This ban includes the University of Connecticut. We can use whatever office supplies we currently possess, but once they are gone we cannot replace them till July 1. Because this decree is new, it is unclear whether the CWP or any other university aktivitas can use grant, endowment, or discretionary funds for supplies. I suspect we will learn that we are permitted to do so within certain parameters and only with administrative permission.

After Governor Rell banned the use of state funds for out of state travel, the university responded by placing strict limits on the use of grants, endowments, and discretionary funds to make up for the loss. The CWP receives state funding through the English Department, but we also receive a core grant of federal funds from the NWP, we generate our own discretionary funds from professional development, and we have access to funding from the Aetna Chair of Writing that is at the discretion of the Aetna Advisory Board. At first, it seemed that we would simply have to rely on these sources for out of state travel, but now if we want to use those funds we have to receive written permission from the English department head, the CLAS dean, and in some cases one of the provosts, as well. This permission is ostensibly to ensure that such travel is essential, but realistically it appears to have much to do with public relations.

What this means for the CWP is that if we want to use NWP funds or our own PD revenue to travel later this month to the New England Writing Projects Conference in Northampton, Massachusetts, or in early April to the NWP’s Spring Meeting in Washington, DC to lobby for reauthorization of funding for the NWP, we have to get permission from three levels of university administration. Ironically, the permission form has not been made available online, so everyone who wants to get permission to use non-state funds to travel outside of Connecticut has to inundate the offices of the deans and provosts with written forms that we may no longer be allowed to use state money to purchase the paper on which to print the forms! We may even find ourselves in a situation where we have to complete written forms to request permission to use federal grant money to purchase the paper to print the forms. Got it? That’s exactly how it has felt lately.

I’m being facetious, of course. I understand the complexity of the current situation, and sincerely believe that the deans and provosts generally are well intentioned, even when I disagree. (Although I don’t think I can express the same generosity of spirit toward the governor’s office). Part of the perkara in Connecticut is an ideological split between the Democratic and Republican responses to the economic crisis. On the one hand, we have a Democratic administration in Washington responding to the crisis by spending money to stimulate the economy, and on the other hand we have a Republican administration in Hartford responding to the crisis by rescinding money and freezing expenditures to tame the economy. The other factor in Connecticut is the Balanced Budget Law, which has been in place since 1992. This law amended the state constitution to require that “general budget expenditures authorized for any fiscal year shall not exceed the estimated amount of revenue for such fiscal year.” So even if Governor Rell were an economic liberal, it could be argued that she’d be violating the state constitution if she authorized spending that exceeds revenue. Now if I’m reading the law correctly, the governor and legislature would not actually be violating the constitution by allowing the state to go into deficit this year, as the authorized spending was based on estimated revenue. Where we’d be in trouble, however, would be next year when the estimated revenues would be much less and the budget would have to enact dramatic cuts in expenditures. It could be argued that Rell sees her current rescissions and freezes as preparation for that likelihood.

However, it seems to me that many of the orders that come down from on high seem short-sighted and ill-considered. I know wasteful spending exists and some cuts have to be made, but what is gained by making us fill out forms to get permission to use non-state funds to travel? Those funds already have limits placed on them. In the case of the NWP funds, there is an Office of Sponsored Programs and a grant manager who regulate these limits. This form just becomes a waste of state funds as we all spend time on the forms when we could and should be doing other things—like teaching. And what is the wisdom of freezing expenditures on things like service contracts or cleaning products? This way, when the copier breaks we’ll have to buy a new one, and when the bathrooms become disgusting after four months without proper cleaning we’ll be in violation of OSHA regulations!

OK, I know I’m just starting to rant. These are difficult times and everyone in an administrative position has had to make tough decisions, the CWP included, but we have to put a little more thought and creativity into how to save money, rather than just make sweeping decrees like across the board cuts and complete freezes, or implement cosmetic and inefficient responses like triplicate forms. There’s just got to be a better way.

First, The Bad News ...

Jejak PandaHallo Jumpa Lagi Kita Di Blog Ini
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.