http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/21593Outrage in L.A
by Mr. Recinos | May 2, 2009 - 8:17pm Share
On April 15, 2009, the Los Angeles board of education decided to put 5,400 teachers out of work. Since then, everywhere I look, the coverage on this outrage is ridiculously scarce. When I get lucky and actually do find a report, I notice that the coverage is carefully sugarcoated by those robots at the Associated Press. Not once has a report noted the fact at how tremendous of an impact this will actually have on the students of L.A. On average, one teacher accounts for over twenty-five students, at least. Multiply that number by 5,400, and you have about 135,000 students who have lost their teachers. This is an absolute catastrophe, as the L.A board has severely struck the most important aspect of any people's future, the education of their children.
Where are 135,000 students without their teachers supposed to go next year? To the classrooms of their fellow pupils of course. Presently, I have seen no plans over how in the world that is going to be coordinated, but I am absolutely certain that classrooms are going to go from an already bad situation to a full-scale circus. As usual, the hardest hit kids are in schools recognized as L.A's worst, which consist of a large number of new teachers who aren't tenure-protected. Schools such as Gompers Middle School in South Los Angeles, Markham Middle School in Watts, and John H. Liechty Middle School, west of downtown are at risk of losing nearly half of their staff. If the school locations sound familiar, it's because they're in areas where violence and crime has run rampant and deteriorated enough to have made many headlines in the past, ranging from race riots to fatal shootings. Now the kids who attend those schools are destined to see an even greater dilapidation in their environments, as teachers aren't the only ones who are getting the pink slip. Administrators, counselors, custodians, nurses, teachers' assistants, and security are receiving their notices as well, meaning that by 2010, schools across L.A can be expected to be even dirtier, more under-supplied, with less security guards in case of an emergency, and less nurses in case of injuries, all on top of classrooms that are going to be more packed than ever before, and less counselors to console those looking for help.
Yet that's not the worst part. The worst part is that those 135,000 students are having their grade point averages being put at risk, along with the fellow-pupils who they will be joining in newly-founded condensed classrooms. I myself remember having to take part in over-crowded classes when I was in high school, and to say that it was nothing short of horrible is an under-statement. Thirty-five kids all under one authority can make for a very difficult situation, as individual attention from a teacher is severely limited. Now that bull-shit is going to be elevated for more kids, and in effect it's going to affect grades for students who are struggling to merely graduate, as well as kids who are trying to shape up solid grade point averages for college. Dropout rates are bound to increase, as the young delinquents whose hope for educating themselves is already on the verge of disappearing will be given even more excuses to just quit. And those whose only option to the university of their dreams are stand-up qualifications will be entrenched in more difficult settings that will undoubtedly mar their ambition. This isn't hyperbolic nonsense but logical explanation of the many ways in which a student's life and future are tremendously affected by the presence of a teacher and in this case, the lack of 5,400 of them.
And that’s only one side of the spectrum, as many of those teachers, counselors, administrators, custodians, nurses, teachers' assistants, and security have children of their own. But I don't need to go into that, as any parent knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Something horrible happened on April 15, 2009. And yet left and right, media outlets in L.A are waiting half an hour into their broadcasts to report on the breaking news of this story, placing more importance on the possibility of rain tomorrow. You know that something has gone horribly wrong with your local news when more time is spent talking about the five day forecast than the fact that the children who are coming up in the world around you are being mistreated, overlooked, and disrespected with acts such as these.
It has been too long now that teachers all across our nation have had their incomparable importance overlooked by morons who fail to understand the vitality of even one teacher or counselor to an entire community. These officials have continuously mismanaged school budgets for years, and now the people who pay for their mistakes are the same people who somehow actually have the patience to sit with our children to try and teach them something. You ask any good teacher or counselor why he or she is a part of their field, in which the kids can be such a pain, and in which the pay can be so unfulfilling, and that teacher or counselor will tell you that it's not about the money, but that it's about the passion to inform and enlighten the future faces of our society. That is heroism at it's best, and now those heroes are the ones who have lost their jobs, but everyone loses when they have to pack up their things and walk away from the children.
President Obama himself has said that "a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity, it is a pre-requisite." Truer words were never spoken, but the way these cuts are slashing at the lives of both teachers and students, the providers of those pathways to opportunities are being harmed, and it is an absolute outrage.
_______
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
