The Blog of Ms. Mercer

Recently I shared the situation at my school, which is set to lose 6 out of 22 teachers (actually 6 out of 17 classroom teachers) in Pink slips, we don’t need no freakin’ pink slips… @ In Practice

I wish I could say my trip to a district budget sub-committee meeting helped, but my folks who read the tea leaves say that Kinder 20-1 and 9th grade class-size reduction is going to be abandoned by the district. The news from the Capitol is even worse,

The Latest From Capitol Alert - Capitol Alert - The Sacramento Bee - Budget misspeak

The budget deficit could actually be much higher than Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested last week, his aides said today.

Schwarzenegger “misspoke” when he framed the 2008-09 budget deficit as a $10 billion problem, according to his communications director, Matt David. Instead, the governor intended to say the 2008-09 budget deficit could be $10 billion higher than the original estimate, for a total of $17.4 billion, David said.

The Republican governor is scheduled to release his revised budget proposal May 14, which should render all of the pre-estimates moot.

Some suspect the governor may be shooting high with his estimates to gain leverage in negotiations over revenue increases or a long-term budget reform plan. If more people believe the budget problem is severe, the governor has a better case to make. [I sure as heck hope so!]

So, after all of this, I’m sitting in the staff room today, and I must have looked pretty bad, because on of the teachers who has been pink-slipped asked how I was doing, and what was wrong. I didn’t have the heart to explain, cause it’s not my job on the line (at least not at this point), so I muttered something vague. I mean here she is, on a one year contract, no hope of a job next year, and she’s worrying about how I’m doing!

Least you think I only care about the adults, the bottom line is that all of this will not help students, and will likely make things worse. For more on how messed up our funding priorities are, check out Peter Schrag: California school funding: Inadequate by any measure - sacbee.com.