Essentially my home town got an enormous blow to the school budget. It
started with a few layoffs, and by the end of the “project” they literally
cut ALL ELECTIVES from the entire school. This leaves nothing but the
bare essentials, and i do mean nothing “but the…” They cut the music
program, sports, things like cooking, computers (seriously, computers? in
today’s age?), accounting, and a lot of others even shop, welding, etc.
All elective programs that ended up cutting about half the entire staff at
the school. My mother was one of them, who taught and has been with the
school district now for somewhere between 15-20 YEARS, even she got the
blow. Even more frustrating is no one got a call, pulled into a room or
told. Just a simple cheap letter saying “Hey sorry… bye” pretty much.
The saddest thing is that I really really am fearing for the future
generation and the working class there. The town was driven by service
related business as well as production. Even the bread and butter
electives FOR that county got hacked. A tire company that specialized in
tires, wheels, suspension and service moved their HQ to the next town
over. The mills shut down. And all the local businesses that thrived off
of it are now struggling to get by. When I was growing up there was 8000
people, it grew to over 10,000. A few months back the unemployment rate
was over 20%. And has continued to climb up and down the scale. But
lately people have been moving out of the town because of the jobs and
schools like the town is on fire.
I may not be part of the community anymore as I don’t live there, but I
sure as hell remember it and I feel sorry for it.
It’s crazy to think that there are so many other places in the united
states AND in other countries dealing with this right now on such a scale.
It’s frightening to say the least, and I feel sorry for those affected.
Never would have even expected someone like my mother being laid off
having one of the largest seniority and “multiple hat” wearing teaching
jobs with different classes.
Who’d have thought.
Sorry to rant and rave. Figured I’d post this up as it’s quite literally
one of the worst unemployment rates in this entire area.
Ya our HS here is becoming a … Forgot what’s it’s called… Where people who want to be teachers but do t have their degree yet can teach sort of like a intern. Ya thing are going down hill.
In many states there are no actual teaching requirements. The catch is teachers with no certification are not paid by the state. What you are probably thinking of is a voucher that acts like certification. States give them out mainly in low demand subjects (science and math for example) to give people time to get their certification. We have people like that here in Georgia, but most are knowledgeable in the subject area just not trained as educators.
It is a very sad situation. I am going to school to be an educator, and look forward to working for a more professional school system than that one. Many students are not skilled at doing the reading writing and arithmetic, but can find a comfort zone in vocational classes. Without these classes, I see many kids losing interest in school and giving up.
Feeling the pain here in good 'ol Cali too. My son, who is in his H.S. band, has been informed that he’ll need to pay the full bill for being in band to cover the schools expenses. That means an additional $800 will need to be paid if he is to be in band. And we’re the lucky ones. Of the 3 high schools in this 100,000 population city, only two will even have a band as of now.
The tell tale signs of the economy’s future are damn scary too… forget all the hype you read on the news. I work for the post office here in Temecula and we’ve seen a huge drop in mail, except in one form… certified letters for foreclosure notifications. Our PO is a mailing hub for a couple banks and collection bureaus, and we process the un-signed for letters to be returned to the banks. Our one post office scans back in approx 60,000 certified letters a DAY… and remember those are only the ones that have not been accepted and signed for by the recipients. Figure in a 50 percent acceptance ratio and we’re talking 120k letter a day being mailed to delinquent mortgage holders. Think more repo’s are on the way? Oh yeah! We’ve only seen the beginning of this mess imo.
We’ve had days where we had as many as 11 employees doing nothing but scan in the letters for return to the banks. Crazy scary…
teaching w/o a license is called “lateral entry” here in NC, just a fyi
in a typical move the arts/music departments are the first ones feeling major heat around here