ConcernedForFuture's Blog

My wife is a teacher, and this is her first year tenured. This year has been a joke, and all of her co-workers, even the students are being effected by the current budget crisis.

My wife and I stay up watching the news, hoping to see some sort of media attention, something to alert the general public of how bad things are. What do we see?

Alligators. For some reason, there is news, that lasts for over 5 minutes, about alligators. Are we supposed to be concerned, maybe scared? Is this a real threat? Do we have enough things to be scared of? Pedophiles, murderers, people stealing our aluminum, thieves... and now alligators. All I can say is 'wow, are you serious?'

After that.. a short piece about how what pregnant women eat, may effect the sex of the child. They didn't say what they should or shouldn't eat, or what basis they are reporting this information, just that it 'might' effect the sex of the child.
Despite what biology teachers have taught for years, and what they still teach, the news is saying something different. Biology teachers would have you believe that as soon as a man's sperm hits the womans egg, the sex of the baby is determined, and that since only the man can pass on the Y chromosome, that nothing the woman does can effect the babies sex.

Are the professors, who have studied the subject for so many years, wrong? And if so, give us some sort of supporting FACTS, so that we can go tell them how wrong they are!

In any case, we didn't see anything about the education budget crisis... till this morning, on the news ticker on the bottom, was it only briefly mentioned, that legislature is meeting about the education budget. It wasn't talked about, it only flashed across the screen for a moment.

So while there is no coverage about education, something that effects our fundamental values.. whether ours kids get a good education.. we are being told to fear alligators, and told that women should be careful what they eat while pregnant..

About 2 weeks ago, in Volusia county, all schools had all funds frozen. If a teacher ordered paper, or any other supply, it was denied. The kids here, soon, won't have the things they need to learn in the classroom... because the teachers can't get it. But thats not all thats happened so far, there needs to be 47 million dollars cut from the budget for schools in volusia county alone.

Yesterday, there was a meeting that included all principals, in which they were told any teacher who is not tenured(meaning has not taught for three years, and is under contract) is fired, and won't be brought back next year. If this is their 3rd year teaching, they are not tenured until the first day of the next year, so they are fired. They will finish out this year, and not come back after.

So even though the number of students remain the same, there will be less teachers. There was supposed to be a law, limiting class size to 25 students per teacher, most likely to increase the quality of education, maybe even for the safety of the students, but obviously this can't happen now.

Do you know about this? This isn't even over, that still is not enough of a budget cut, so what is next? And why isn't this in the news?