The caption is the response by Bridgeport Superintendent of Schools John Ramos to the announcement last night by the Connecticut State Department of Education endorsing $280 million in cuts in education funding for the next fiscal year. Ramos sums up what thousands of school administrators, teachers and concerned parents around the state must be thinking on reading of the proposed cuts.
For many working people in Connecticut, the effects of the global recession have so far been only rumors of war. Some of us have already lost our jobs, many have watched the stock market slash into our retirement funds, but this was mostly bad news from afar, involving events and decisions over which we had no control.
This announcement by the state board of education must be viewed differently. This is not a rumor of war but the war itself. This is a frontal attack on the youth of Connecticut and also on the poorer cities and towns of Connecticut that rely on these funds to provide basic educational services. How we respond to this attack will be an important test.
Unions, educators, parents, community groups: roll over for this fight and not only will it result in the devastation of urban and poor rural schools, but it will guarantee that more vicious attacks will follow.
Treat this as just another “adjustment” that needs to be made, as belt-tightening, as a matter of fiscal responsibility, and these cuts will waken the blood-lust of the corporations and the conservative ideologues who want to make us pay full price for this recession.
Treat these proposed cuts as something to haggle over so that maybe the cuts will only be $1t0 million . . . or maybe only $180 million . . . and expect a union-busting war on public employees and on poor communities.
And perhaps most dangerous, wait for president-elect Obama to ride in on a white horse and rescue us with a stimulus package that lets the state off the hook, that replaces 30% or even 70% of what has been taken away, and you give a clear signal that we are not prepared to fight for what’s ours. That we view the education of our children as a one-time charity payment instead of as a central mission of our local elected officials.
Governor Rell has said recently that she wants to use the budget crisis as an opportunity to return the State to its “core functions.” That’s quickly becoming the catch phrase for the wealthy who want us to pay for their recession. The suggestion that education and the welfare of our children – all of our children – is not a core function of government should strike every one of us cold.
Perhaps when facing a mild downturn in the economy or in anticipation of a very short term setback the natural tendency among all of the players – municipal leaders, educators, unions, state officials and even parents – would be to look at ways to patch the leak. Perhaps compromises would be in order . . . or at least there would be a tacit recognition that they must be made.
There is nothing run of the mill about this recession. Every sign is that it will be deeper and more severe than anything that most of us have seen in our lifetimes. Economists are now routinely describing it as the hardest downturn since the Great Depression and there is no indication that we have “hit bottom” nor is there an end in sight. Connecticut economists are talking about job losses in the range of 80-90,000, and even if it is not worse than that, such losses will mean major disruption in urban and poor rural parts of the state.
In this crisis, the proposal that the state gouge $280 million from funding for education is not an invitation to haggle. It is guns being drawn. The response to this threat cannot be a counter-offer. It cannot be “take the future of other peoples’ kids but not mine.” We have to draw the line: in a severe recession, you don’t take away education or vital social services, you don’t lay off workers or put people into poverty. These are precisely what working people and poor people need to survive the recession. The only rational response to the state board of education proposal must be “Not one penny less for our children. No cutbacks. Period.”
Filed under: Economic crisis
[...] The caption is the response by Bridgeport Superintendent of Schools John Ramos to the announcement by the Connecticut State Department of Education endorsing $280 million in cuts in education funding for the next fiscal year. Ramos sums up what thousands of school administrators, teachers and concerned parents around the state must be thinking on reading of the proposed cuts. [continued at Two Good Hands] [...]