On Monday, California lawmakers saw their pay cut by 18 percent. Instead of earning $116,208 a year, they will drop to $95,291.
It was a move that our dear legislators did everything they could to keep from occurring, including pleading with State Attorney General Jerry Brown to declare the cut illegal. (He wisely and correctly declined to do so.)
This brings us to this past Tuesday when the LAUSD board threatened cuts closer to home. The board told the LA’s public school teachers that either 5000 more jobs would be slashed from the district payrolls in the next two years, OR the teachers could take a more than 11 percent drop in pay.
It hardly needs to be said that, if LA’s teachers take the proposed wage hit, they will NOT be grossing $95 grand as their remaining take home.
On the Huffington Post, impassioned Venice High English teacher Dennis Danziger takes a look at the brand new unholy choice of LAUSD cuts from a perspective other than purely fiscal: He sees the cuts as a civil rights issue.
Here, in part, is what he writes:
I stood in a crowd of four or five hundred red-shirted fellow teachers outside Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters near downtown LA late this afternoon. Inside the LAUSD Board was debating, and would later vote on a budget plan which called for a 12% teacher pay cut; plus they’d consider tossing in a few furlough dates just for good measure. All totaled, the package, if approved, would amount to just under a 15% pay cut.
There goes cable TV. Christmas gifts to everyone on my list. The photographer at my daughter’s upcoming wedding. Hand sanitizer. July, August and September rent. Abbot Kinney pizza. The 3,000 mile oil change. Bully sticks for my dogs Leo and Soni. And the land line.
[SNIP]More disappointing than imagining my shrinking paycheck was the Board’s lone alternative to the proposed pay cuts. In lieu of a pay cut we teachers could vote to have 5,000 LAUSD employees, including 1,400 of our fellow teachers, canned. Kind of a Sophie’s Choice move by the Board. Your money or your colleagues’ jobs. You choose.
This year the LAUSD booted 2,000 teachers off its payroll, and the English classes I teach at Venice HS jumped from 27 students per class in 2008 to 37 students per class this year. Another round of teacher cuts and my classes will be so packed they’ll be in violation of city fire codes. Oh well.
We few hundred protesters milled around in the cold shouting the same old lame union chants: “Enough is enough. Enough is enough.” And the old reliable United Teachers of Los Angeles chant, “U-T-L-A! U-T-L-A!”
Someone with a microphone shouted, “Louder, so they can hear you upstairs!”
Maybe if the 48,000 UTLA members who stayed away from our demonstration had showed up, the people upstairs would have heard our voices. Would have thought twice before threatening our livelihoods, trashing our profession, before threatening to turn a second-rate school district into little more than storage units, holding facilities for the poor. Because that’s what the LAUSD is fast becoming.
Check out the LAUSD website and you’ll learn that over 90% of its students are non-white and the vast majority of them are poor.
So I don’t take the Board’s proposed pay cuts, furloughs and layoffs personally. It’s not that the Board hates teachers. Heck, I figure they could care less about us one way or the other.
This is a civil rights issue. What the Board is doing, if they impose these cuts, is making sure that LA’s poor and working class children don’t stand much of a chance when it comes time to compete for college slots. When it comes time for these kids to enter the workforce.
What the Board will insure if they pass these cuts is that the status quo will prevail. They’ll make sure the tech schools and the military fill their quotas. Make sure there’s another generation of cheap labor. Bus boys, car wash attendants, people who can answer phones, vacuum office floors, deliver pizzas, rake leaves, change diapers, stock shelves and check the oil…..
Read the rest here.
“Check out the LAUSD website and you’ll learn that over 90% of its students are non-white and the vast majority of them are poor.”
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I’ll also learn that a large percentage of LAUSD students are the kids of illegal aliens, what a SURPRISE, the sanctuary capital is broke and it’s school district is “second-rate”.
I was sure money grew on trees in the rich state of California. Damn it, the gavacho robber barons must have stole all of California’s money.
Thank you, WTF, for enlightening us on the fact that Mexicans introduced illiteracy to the United States. Before Mexican immigration, we had no problems with illiteracy in America. Even kids in those southern back wood towns where the town tree house served as the elementary school, and where the average age of the elementary school student was 33, they were reading and writing like a bunch of little Kurt Vonneguts. Where would we be without your astute knowledge on immigration? You keep fighting the good fight, WTF.
I really enjoy how R.B. jumps to his own conclusions, yes we have second-rate school in other cities, like Lancaster, Ca. The state is not as rich as you once thought, we have enough problems with our own citizens, we don’t need to add more poor illegal aliens to our long list of social problems.
The government does not have unlimited resources or ability to fix our current problems. How is supporting/allowing every poor illegal alien into the state, going to help solve the problem of uneducated hill-billies and red-necks?
Do you understand this simple concept?
Can WTF understand the simple concept below?
http://www.televisiontunes.com/Sheriff_John_-_Laugh_and_Be_Happy.html
The Whole World Really Laughs With You WTF 🙂
A civil rights issue? What nonsense. Hell, if the teachers feel so strongly about civil rights, why are they moaning about their cable tv? Why not teach as volunteers?
Times are tough. I feel for anyone taking a 10% pay cut. But I’m in private industry, and I took a hit last year too. Shall I protest out in the streets? And my best customer for my moonlighting work took a hit and gave me zero work last year. Shall I protest out in the streets?
The public school system is a joke. It can’t teach, and it has way too many incompetent teachers. If it were run in a more businesslike way, a downturn would cause the less effective teachers to be dumped – improving the quality. But since it socialist and unionized, it won’t work that way.
Who really cares what happens to the education of hundreds of thousands of minority students? We all should. These kids will grow up and not live in isolation. They will be members of our society, educated or uneducated.
If you are a member of the public, ask yourself whether you are willing to live in alongside people who have been stripped of the enriched education you and I received, with music, arts, and even civics! Because let there be no doubt the graduates from Fremont and LAUSD are among us. I have seen them working at Cedars-Sinai, the Century City Mall, at places all over the Westside. Why would we want to deprive the very people who may be your nursing home attendants of an equitable education? Yes, indeed, this is a civil rights issue.
I am far more concerned with the fact that I am living alongside people from all backgrounds who have been getting the lousy excuse for education that modern educrats are providing as a substitute for learning what is needed. Modern educrats despise the idea of memorization of facts, for example. You don’t have to be poor to be deprived of both that important skill learning (memorization) and the facts that result – you can go to the most expensive private schools and get the same pablum instead of a good education.
To hell with “enriched” education – how about some basic education!
I think this pay cut is nuts and reflects poorly on the people of Los Angeles. But that op-ed doesn’t begin to address the scope of the problem effectively. And, frankly, if I were an English teacher grading it, I’d put a couple of big question marks and red circles around stuff like “hand sanitizer” or “The photographer at my daughter’s upcoming wedding.” Was that satire ? It didn’t work. I also wish folks who rag on illegal immigrants would address the problem at its root, which is employers dangling jobs to draw these folks here. Of course this issue impacts the schools, but anyone who wants to solve it by withholding education or other social services from people living among us is an idiot. Really. Total fucking idiot. Almost as stupid as people who want to build “a wall.” (I can guarantee that wall wouldn’t get built without the contractors using illegal labor, BTW!) The solution is an electronic social security card so that payrolls are automatically hooked to a data-base of legitimate ss# holders. If you wonder why we haven’t instituted an effective system years ago, round up some wealthy southern California or Texas employers in agriculture, “hospitality” and construction and ask them about it. Because you can bet your ass they’ve got more representation in state capitols and in DC than a bunch of raggedy bastards sweating their way over the border.
I also have to say that I’m not shocked that John Moore doesn’t know the difference between memorization and education. The most important learning skill isn’t memorization but learning how to learn. Even basic literacy isn’t a simple process of memorization – it’s gaining some tools to advance one’s ongoing ability to crack the written language “code” and use it effectively. Memorizing some shit and then going out in today’s world doesn’t cut it. Not even close.
Reg: I also wish folks who rag on illegal immigrants would address the problem at its root, which is employers dangling jobs to draw these folks here
Nope, the history of large scale corruption in Mexico is the root cause for the poor of that country to flee. Every branch of government is part of it and the money forked over by the poorest of Mexico’s citizens to be able to survive makes the choice to come here a no brainer.
To sanction, fine and even jail American business people for hiring illegals is fine and needed, but to say the root cause of illegal immigration are American employers tosses aside the realities of why people flee Mexico in the first place. Who would risk the trip if there were other choices available to them in the first place?
Surefire – I’m referring to the root cause so far as Americans and our political class can do anything about it. The jobs here are a magnet. That’s pretty “root.” They flee north, not south because the labor markets here welcome them. Pretty obvious, but thanks for sharing your concerns about poverty causing crime.
Poverty is a cause of some crime, but not an excuse to engage in it.