The kids will pay

Today is a furlough day. All teachers in my school system are taking today off without pay. Of course all days off are without pay unless it is one of our accumulated sick days. Teachers only get paid for the contracted days they work. In spite of popular opinion they do not get paid holidays. Teachers take reduced salaries through the months they work, so that they can receive equal paychecks during the calendar year.

President Obama and the economic officials are telling us that we are now in a state of economic recovery. It doesn’t feel like a recovery to me. It isn’t that teachers are being given furlough days that bothers me. It is much more than that. Besides the furlough days, the metro area school systems have been in the process of laying off teachers and support personnel, increasing the number of students in the classroom, reducing the music and art programs in schools, eliminating effective programs and closing small schools in an effort to make the budget work.

It is proven that children do better in smaller classes and that the arts enhance education.

Teachers will do what they have always done next year. They will go into the classroom and teach to the best of their ability with the resources they have available but in the long run children will still pay the price.

This situation is not something that is happening only in the metro Atlanta area. School systems across the nation are finding it more and more difficult to meet the needs of children in woefully underfunded educational systems. According to the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, all powers not granted to the federal government nor denied to the states is reserved for the states. This includes education; however, the federal government has already stepped into the domain of education through several funding programs that could be relaxed a little in light of the current economic situation.

The federal government, in an effort to provide educational opportunity for the poor, provides funds for reading and math through Title I programs. The use of these federal funds are tightly regulated and closely audited. It is probably the only government program so tightly regulated. Since these are time of unparalleled difficulty as state tax bases and sales tax collections decline, it would be appropriate to liberalize some of the Title I spending to allow school districts to offset funding shortfalls from state and local funding sources. This should not be a permanent solution but could be used to temporary offset the loss of available funding.

Remember that the children we educate today will be drawing your blood at the hospital tomorrow, fixing your vehicles, and inventing the machines that might save your lives. They will be the artists, musicians, engineers, doctors, nurses, scientists, teachers and lawyers in our future. We cannot let them down.