Advanced SearchNext time you see Gov. Jan Brewer or one of her Republican cronies at the state Legislature, say “thank you” for shoving our children into the depths of ignorance.
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In the name of balancing the budget, they have done a hatchet job on education and other discretionary funds that are more along party lines than anything that resembles fiscal or social responsibility.
The fact that they’re swinging machetes like they just broke out of a jungle hoosegow before receiving a dime of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money says it’s more about the new sheriff in town flexing muscles.
On Friday in Tucson, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said, “The Arizona Legislature is making disproportionate cuts on the backs of Arizona’s children. Our state leaders should - worry about how to end this recession while helping constituents and their families, not find ways to revive tired election-year arguments.”
Locally, Superintendent Shawn McCollough called $658,364 in state cuts to the Nogales Unified School District No. 1, a “monumental blow.” He and the NUSD board need our support in making the tough decisions. Now is the time to eliminate practices that don’t result in the best return on our tax dollars and benefit for our students.
At a meeting last month, board member Hector Arana said, “We have been accustomed to doing things the way they ought not be done. It’s going to be the proof in the pudding if we can change our habits to save jobs.”
We say perhaps some of those jobs don’t need saving. This school year alone, enrollment has dropped by 122 students. In the past five years, enrollment has declined by about 500 students, costing the district more than $2 million in funding. Why is it that staff levels have not gone down?
The NUSD culture has been to transfer employees who can’t cut the mustard, including administrators, to other positions and absorb others who came on board originally on contract and whose contracts have long-ago expired.
NUSD is not an employment agency nor is it welfare for the inept. Let’s put some of that money back into the classrooms and dump the dead weight. No time is better than now.
(Write us at 268 W. View Point Dr. Nogales, Ariz., 85621 or editorial@nogalesinternational.com.)
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Comments
To A Concerned Parent and Reader wrote on Mar 4, 2009 11:37 AM:
Zigmund wrote on Mar 3, 2009 1:59 PM:
Now I hear there is a petition being circulated to circumvent the hiring process for a new principal at NHS so that Fernando Parra gets the job.
This is a prime expmple of our "pueblo" mentality of taking care of our own at the expense of everything else, including our children's education.
Parra dropped out of the running to avoid politics, he said. In his shoes, I would have stayed in and let the best man or woman win. Perhaps he felt he was not up to par with other contenders.
The latest is he has thrown his hat back into the ring at the 11th hour.!!! What or who made him change his mind?
I personally think he would have been the if not one of the top contenders. However, if the petition bears fruit and he accepts the appointment in this manner, it will signal that he was , after all is said and done, playing the very same political game he professed to be against.
I smell a rat. "
A Concerned Parent and Reader wrote on Mar 3, 2009 11:50 AM:
What about the REST of the facts that change the story? What about providing some context to the story? Do journalistic standards mean nothing in the Nogales International like the do for most of the papers across this country? Is it the purpose of the paper to tow a particular agenda? That is what the first few paragraphs of your Opinion in today's paper made me think.
You failed to mention that the cut of $130 Million dollars is a minor fraction of the State of Arizona's budget for Education. According to documents published by the Arizona Office of Strategic Planning and Budgeting the 2008 Fiscal Year budget for education is $4.0319814 BILLION. If the cut was from this budget value it represents a change of only 3.23 Percent. However, the budget for the 2009 Fiscal Year for education is $4.141201 Billion, which is a 2.7 percent increase over 2008. It is this budget they have said the 130 million dollars has to come out of. That means that the net change from the 2008 budget would be a loss of approximately 0.5 percent.
Further more, you failed to mention that the state of Arizona's total budget is only about $10 billion a year, and that education, excluding the universities, acounts for 40 percent of the state budget.
You also failed to mention that state wide, only about 50 to 55 percent of the money for education actually makes it to the schools for use in the classrooms. Much of the money is wasted in running the districts. An example of this comes from one of our neighbors, Sierra Vista, where they were paying a vice-principle at the Buena High School approximately $100,000 a year and his only job was to schedule varsity football games. While this was back in the 1990's, it remains a glaring example of the type of waste that occures in the school districts. We can clean that waste by going through the district offices as ask what is your job and how does it directly impact and aide the education of our children. If that question cannot be answered, then that position does not need to exist. My point is that the dollars per student the state expends means nothing if a significant portion of that money never makes it to the classroom.
I agree that practices at NUSD, and other districts, that waste money need to change, but the need for change must go beyond just those practices.
Many things need to change:
Schools need to quit teaching to the lowest common donominator.
Parents need to quit treating school as day care.
Parents need to be responsible for instilling a desire to learn in their children at an early age, and recognize the fact that you cannot teach someone who does not want to learn.
Parents need to teach their children some of the basics before they reach school, such as counting to 10, their abc's, colors, shapes, etc. (for most of us older than 35 it was our parents who taught us these things, not the schools)
Parents need to start caring about their kids and their kids' education.
We need to start valuing teachers like we used to decades ago when teachers ranked with Doctors and Lawyers and the President in terms of prestige of occupation.
We need to return to a time when teachers came from the top percentages of graduating college classes, not the bottom 10 percent as they do today.
We need to let the schools have rules of conduct that they can enforce with out having to worry about "hurting someone's feelings".
We need to recognize that not everyone is cut out for or desiring to go to college, and should set up programs, such as vocational training, that will better serve their needs instead of trying to force them through a program for college that they will drop out of. "