email from VEA Teacher's Union on budget

[Gopher Broke]

March 10, 2010

Dear xxxxxx,

As you may know the Senate and House are deadlocked over the budget. The budget conferees from the two chambers are $542 million apart on PreK-12 Education funding. The House budget cuts an additional $684 million beyond the cuts in the introduced budget and the Senate cuts $142 million. The Senate is holding out to protect public education. Senator Mary Margaret Whipple, the majority caucus chair in the Senate asked that I convey the following message to you:

Dear educators,

Like many of you, I consider public education to be one of Virginia's most fundamental responsibilities. As the chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus, I can tell you that our 22 Democratic Senators are absolutely committed to providing a world class education to every child in the Commonwealth.

Our current budget situation forced us to make many decisions that we wish we never had to make, and hope we never will again. Governor McDonnell declared that no new revenue could be included in the budget, meaning that an additional $2 billion in spending cuts were required on top of what Governor Kaine cut in December.

During the process of crafting our budget, we sought to save jobs, minimize the impact on citizens, especially our children, and position Virginia for future success as the economy continues to recover. There are stark differences between the Senate and House budgets: The House's budget makes $679 million in cuts to public education, many of them permanent, while the Senate makes only $133 million in temporary cuts. The House gives localities $250 million from reduced retirement plan payments to make their cuts appear more palatable, but then demands localities return $181 to the state. This sleight of hand may actually put us in danger of losing federal funding and the Senate does not include this "clawback" provision. The House's budget eliminates funding for planning periods for middle and high school teachers, while the Senate continues to provide this valuable time for teachers. Governor McDonnell proposed eliminating state support for the school breakfast program. The Senate's budget restores funding to this program and makes a modest increase in support. The House of Delegates' budget gives localities the ability to fire resource teachers. The Senate will fight to protect these jobs. Under one of the most troubling provisions of the House's budget, all our at-risk programs will be lumped into one pool of money and funded by block grant. This means each program will compete against each other instead of getting the support they deserve. Under the House plan, at-risk funding will be distributed according to average daily membership instead of students in federal free lunch. This permanent change will favor size over need and is strongly opposed by the Senate. If the House budget passes, thousands more faculty and staff will be laid off, class sizes will increase, and our children will not get the remediation they need. The budget is now going to a "conference committee" where representatives of the House and Senate will reconcile the differences between the two budgets. Our caucus, the Senate Democrats, have told our conferees to fight for our budget and reject the crippling cuts proposed by the House. Several of our Senators have addressed education funding in speeches on the floor of the Senate, and if you visit our website, www.vasenatedems.com, you can find a link to the videos as well as more details on the Senate's budget, including our education plan. You can also find contact information for all of the budget conferees, and please sign up for our update list so we can keep you current on all the latest developments.

Thank you, Senator Mary Margaret Whipple Chair, Virginia Senate Democratic Caucus

I hope you find Senator Whipple's letter informative. I will extend the same courtesy to the minority caucus chair if a similar reqeust is made.

Thank you, Robley Jones VEA GR

[La Lydia]

Oh, dear. Sky is falling. If the teachers are competent (iffy, I know), an increase in class size is not the end of the world. But the bottom line is, this woman is carrying water for the VEA and I believe very little of what she has to say. In addition, there is nothing keeping the individual school districts from raising their taxes if they don’t think the state is providing enough funds. Ahem.

[sniper63]

"The House's budget eliminates funding for planning periods for middle and high school teachers, while the Senate continues to provide this valuable time for teachers."

If a teacher has been on the job for more than one year, planning sessions should not be needed, they teach the same program year after year with only slight modifications. The use of previous plans should be enforced and utilized, eliminating the need for these so called "Planning Sessions" ie COFFE CLACHES (sp?).

[CharlesWayneCT]

I’ve often wondered why you need to write new lesson plans year after year for subjects like algebra which are not changing.

I’ve also wondered why every algebra teacher seems to write their own lesson plan, when every class is being taught the same thing.

And I’ve wondered why they don’t find the best teacher of algebra in a school system, or in the country, and broadcast them to every algebra classrom, so that every student gets the absolute best lecturer on the subject. The local teachers can sit in class and answer questions and grade tests.

If that is too radical, each county could pick THEIR best teachers, and keep the broadcasts local. That way each county could control their own lesson plan.

And if they figure out that different kids learn different ways, they could divide the classes up by learning type, and have enough excellent teachers for each type of learning. And those classes could be bigger, since they are lecture classes, which would free up teachers for special classes aimed at students in those subjects that need more one-on-one attention.

Instead of having 2 excellent and 18 average teachers, each teaching 20 students, you could have the 2 excellent teachers lecturing 80 students each in 2 classes of 40 kids, have 4 of the worst teachers (or the best one-on-one, question-answering teachers) assigned to each class of 40. That leaves 12 teachers for the last 40 kids. You assign 10 kids to each of 4 teachers, and the other 8 you can fire, or use to replace retiring teachers.

[matginzac]

I wonder if the letter writer added a flyer asking the teachers to continue wearing blue in support of Obambi?

I taught third grade for four years, 30 kids each year, in a Catholic elementary school in No Va - no money, few facilities, etc. but great, involved parents with God in the classroom everyday and we got the job done, had a good time, went to Mass weekly and all have graduated down the line.

This throwing money at all problems is a lib-tard excuse for not doing the hard work and demanding results from educators - a total canard from start to finish...cut ‘em off at the knees...