Now I can worry

I've read with sympathy and horror about school district woes across the country on the teacher boards I frequent. Some wrote of projections of 45 students in classrooms next year. All wrote of massive layoffs, going deep into their ranks--as deep as the 8th year of experience or more. So far, in my state, not as much as a peep. I seem to recall our governor being stressed about the budget, but promising education would not be affected.

My local newspaper today had a different story. Locally we're facing an 8.1 million dollar shortfall, due to incorrect enrollment predictions (down by 400 students), using part of the mandated 3% reserve to balance the budget previously, and the Lord only knows what other reasons. Additionally, they project that they'll have 7.9 million dollars in unfunded requests for the coming year's budget. They say they'll cut programs but try to leave classrooms alone.

I wonder which programs will get the axe. I'm hoping literacy coaches are the first to go--I don't think it's an effective use of funding to have a busybody running around the school, trying desperately to make herself relevant. Curriculum advisors are fairly useless, too, at least the special ed one I've met seems to be. The math, science, and reading/language arts ones do work hard--part of their job is overseeing the writing of our benchmark tests. Even if I can happily do without all of these folks, their salaries don't come close to being $16 million, so what else will get the axe? A new language series to replace our 6 year old one? I can live with that. Language doesn't change that much over 6 years. But after these, the cuts become harder to bear.

What I fear is that art and music classes will be eliminated. The daily PE classes at my school may have to go to 2-3 times per week. We don't have that much extra in our budget--years of no new property taxes have cut us close to the bone. Besides the effect this will have on these teachers, I worry about how it will affect students. We will truly become test-teachers when we eliminate art and music because these are the only classes where creativity is encouraged (or, alas, even allowed.)

I never had an art class in school. There wasn't one in elementary school, and I was never able to get in the one in junior high school. I had 2 music teachers in elementary school. One was a woman who would show up every now and then in our second grade class. She would begin each song by blowing in a pitch pipe and we would sing, reading the songs from a song book as we did. I remember we sang "A Froggy Went a Courtin'". I had another music teacher in fifth grade, a man. He hated rock 'n roll but loved jazz, and we were afraid of his short temper. I don't remember anything we sang. He came about once a month and terrified us.

Today, I can't sing a lick or draw very well and I wonder if I would be more musical or artistic if I had had a weekly art or music class. I like to draw, however poorly I do at it, but there's a lot about perspective that I never learned. I'm so incompetent at singing that I don't try it at all. :(

Okay, it's become a long post, but I'm worried that we're shortchanging our students. Heck, even before the rumors of budget cuts came, I was worried about our students. The joy of learning has been sucked out of so many classrooms as we concentrate on the damned test everyday, all year long. We begin preparing for it the very first day of school and don't stop until the day before the test. We begin preparing for the next year's test by pre-teaching content from the next grade level the week after the test is taken. There is no down time, no respite. We are a nation of testing teachers and our students are all test takers. Not scholars. Not excited learners. Test takers. It sucks.