My library has already been cut. We will have no bookroom clerk, making novels almost an impossibility and replacement costs much higher than previous years for sure. We will lose one adviser, the person we send students to when they are problematic. We will have a total of fifteen more students each day, meaning that we’ll teach five and a half classes for the same pay as we usually get for teaching just five. The reproduction clerk is gone, meaning that we all will have three-hundred copies per month, end of discussion, and we’ll have to allot time to make those copies ourselves instead of dropping them off and picking them up later. The whisper has it that our athletics director will go away. There’s even talk of moving to two administrators, dropping from our current three. All these things mean that folks will be placed back into classrooms, where the newly christened teachers will be the first on the chopping block. This news comes before what are rumored to be even larger final budget cuts. I can only imagine what further decimation will happen after that.
Sorry to put a damper on the beginning of your summer, but you should start thinking about all these things now. What plans do you have to make it through next year? It’s shaping up to be even leaner than this past year. How do you plan to do your job next year with fewer resources and very likely more students than you’ve ever had in the past? What’s happening in your district and/or school that has you worried? And, most importantly, what do you plan to do about it?
3 comments
2. dy/dan » Blog Archive » California says:
[…] Seal earns the melodramatic title of his post, How Will We Survive?: My library has already been cut. We will have no bookroom clerk, making novels almost an […]
3. dkzody says:
Fresno Unified squirreled away enough money over the years to keep the cuts, this year, from the classroom. The stimulus money will be used to buy out older, higher paid teachers. For a school district that is often doing the wrong thing, for once, it has done a lot of right stuff.
1. Tamara says:
[6/20/2009 - 8:40 am]
This is not unfamiliar at all. I teach in LAUSD.
I’m at a brand new high school, meaning we opened last September. We are a regular, inner city high school. Our principal is in her 3rd year as principal. All 3 of our APs are finishing their first year. We don’t have deans. We are set up in 3 SLCs, one AP and one counselor per SLC.
Next year, unless something changes over the summer, all 3 of our APs will be gone: Pink Slipped. One of our counselors will be gone : Pink Slipped. We are supposed to only be budgeted for 2 APs next year (to share amongst 3 very different SLCs, one of which just voted to become a Pilot School (see CCE website for info on those).
Campus Supervision is down to 2 from 4. This is an urban school! There are two teachers that are rumored to have been displaced. I believe we have 4 or so pink slipped, one is an English teacher in my program/SLC.
So next year for me personally? We voted to become a Pilot School, we’re moving forward with this plan, even without knowing who our AP will be. Who our counselor will be. Who our English teacher will be. Oh, and just to top it all off :) Summer school is only being offered in LA at the high school level and only classes which will prevent kids from graduating on time.
SUCKS!