Dear Colleague,
It’s getting very serious. This month, Governor Bobby Jindal will reveal his budget proposal, which must somehow accommodate an expected $1.6 billion shortfall in state general fund revenue.
The problem spreads farther than Louisiana. Across the country, politicians are trying to balance budgets by cutting the salaries, benefits and even the jobs of teachers and other public servants.
Ultra-conservative politicians are trying to blame the crisis on public employees, instead of the Wall Street profiteers who drove our economy over a cliff in 2008. Some are trying to divide public opinion by calling teachers, firefighters and police officers, social workers and park rangers “tax eaters” who don’t deserve decent salaries, health insurance and retirement pensions.
On February 25, the city of Providence, Rhode Island announced that it will fire all 2,000 of its public school teachers. Their contract with the city will be voided, and these terminated teachers will be replaced with new teachers at lower salaries.
In Wisconsin, where teachers and other public employees have already agreed to big pay cuts and reductions in benefits, the governor is intent on muting their voices by eliminating their long standing right to bargain collectively. That way, when the economy recovers, they can’t negotiate to regain what they lost.
Politicians in Indiana, Ohio, Florida, Michigan and Montana are demanding that public employees surrender their salaries, benefits and contract rights.
Here in Louisiana, three school districts have already declared states of emergency, and several others are making plans to lay off teachers and school employees.
So far in our state, Governor Jindal’s only response to the crisis has been to cut the budget. In the past couple of years, higher education has lost more than $300 million, and faces even more cuts this year. Medical clinics have been closed, and health care for children and the poor is in jeopardy.
The governor says that he has “protected” K-12 funding by freezing the Minimum Foundation Program, instead of reducing it. He says the MFP must be frozen for the third consecutive year.
But let’s be honest. Freezing the MFP amounts to a cut for each of the state’s 70 school districts. That’s especially true because the governor is forcing local school boards to pick up the cost of stipends for national certification ($5.5 million) and the transportation of private and religious school students ($7.2 million).
Outside the MFP, the governor has also cut nearly $70 million in state funding for classroom technology, student remediation, and reading and math initiatives. Local systems will have to pick up the cost if they want to continue those valuable programs.
Freezing the MFP also means more costs to school boards as teachers and school employees move higher on the pay scale, and as the costs of health insurance and
retirement rise.
No, Governor Jindal, freezing the MFP does nothing to protect funding for our schools.
The governor and Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek are offering school boards a way to salvage their budgets by doing harm to educators and the children we serve, using the egregiously misnamed Red Tape Reduction and Local Waiver
Empowerment Act.
The Red Tape Act allows school boards to get waivers for virtually any law or
policy.
Superintendent Pastorek has recommended that systems use the Act to save money. That could mean asking for larger class sizes, eliminating sick leave benefits, abolishing tenure, or changing RIF policy to allow layoffs of more experienced, higher-paid veterans first.
It doesn’t have to be that way! There are better choices that our leaders can make, if they will simply stop bashing public employees and start thinking about what is best for the state.
If you’d like to know more about those choices, and the Better Choices for a Better Louisiana campaign, please visit the LFT Web site at http://la.aft.org, and click on “Better Choices for a Better Louisiana.”
As the legislative session approaches, the LFT will bring you much more information, and ideas about how you can help solve our crisis without jeopardizing our future.