Paul Burka reports on the The Superintendents’ Conference

Great work Paul. He is saying what I’ve been hearing for the last 2-3 years. See Paul’s blog on Friday, June 13, 2008.

Paul says,”The leadership of the state cares more about tax cuts than public education. They have set up a financing system that is designed to strangle education: All of the new money is dedicated funds, like the high school initiative, and there is nothing to cover inflation in the cost of health insurance, utilities, and fuel. As a result, school districts are having to dip into their reserves. Education is no longer funded by formulas; instead it’s “hold-harmless.” The public is unaware of this because the media haven’t covered it.”

This is so so true. This is really the basis for my blog. This is ridiculous. I only hope people are listening and learning, and will educate themselves on the candidates, and vote with their hearts and souls. I’ve only gotten to teach for two years now. As difficult as it has been learning new procedures, politics, dealing with colleagues, parents, learning about ARD’s, special ed -lingo, paperwork, students – building lesson plans, putting those plans in the classroom, grading, the grading systems (a nightmare!!,) learning the school’s software, new software to teach, dealing with administrators, and the kids, those kids, as difficult as all that may have been (to the tune of about 100 hours a week, most weeks, just ask my family) I loved it, I still love it. It’s hard to imagine putting myself into anything else like I have my teaching. Ok, enough about me and my dilemmas, more on what Paul had to say:

“Perry and Craddick are no friends of pub ed; they will want to use the surplus for tax cuts rather than for schools.”

People are you hearing this??? I loved using quotes for my calendars for my classes. There are so many amazing, inspiring quotes, I started putting them on my calendars everyday. Trying to be as uplifing as I possibly could. The one that keeps coming to mind lately, by Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” This could not be more true than right now, and there are even more inspiring quotes by Mahatma Gandhi. Back to Mr. Burka, he summarizes by saying,

“To wrap up: I hope that the state’s leadership realizes what is happening to the schools and responds accordingly. But I’m not optimistic that they will.”

And I agree.

In the News

Well, the Chronicle is just chock-full of items on our Texas public education system today. Wow, where to do I begin? Well, the Outlook section (probably my favorite section, which on Sunday’s I never can seem to find – used to be able to find it behind business, but not today.) Faith in Science – editorial. I’m certainly no expert on the SBOE , nor on what they are doing, but upon searching the blogosphere, I stumbled upon another Texas education blog . They moved, but that will give you more of an idea of what is going on with the evolution vs. creationism. Certainly, not my line of expertise, but I do want to inform as much as possible.

Other articles, in City & State, Rick Casey goes on to explain how “a junior high school principal was hung out to do dry for allowing a Muslim group to make a presentation to seventh- and eighth- graders after a student had allegedly been assaulted for being a Muslium.” He goes on to say, “the presentation was pretty basic. You can see the powerpoint at blogs.chron.com/schoolzone/presentation.ppt.” Chick here for his whole story. And here for the original story. I will admit there are limits as to what I know about the comings and goings of what is going on with education. But…in this case, I do feel we are here to educate, not stifle our children.

On to more horrifying news…on page 4 of City & State, there is a story of a 12 year old boy who allegedly stabbed a friend in a fight. This is what bothers me, what is happening to teaching our children morals, ethics, self awareness??? It ain’t happening.

I do worry who we will elect and what they will do to help our schools, here in Texas and in the nation. I was for Hillary, I had read an article on how she was best suited for helping our schools, and I hope Obama will take notes from her on this subject. McCain, well, I will state here and up front, I’m not holding my breath.

If we want our work force to give us the correct change when we order something, get our records straight, whether it be at the dentist, the IRS or our place of employment, we need to “educate” our children. If we want to teach them high morals, good standards and become upstanding citizens, we need to give them the proper education, and do so with the best tools we can acquire. If we keep taking away from our schools, this will not happen. It will become a dog eat dog world (worse than it is now) and no one will care, no one will know how to care and we will end up with nothing but chaos, not enough jails. Instead, we should be putting more into our schools, so we don’t have to build more jails. It can be done, but it’s like everything, you have to work at it.