Budget Cuts in Pennsylvania – We Need the American Jobs Act

Cross-posted from the White House Blog.

My name is Todd Smeltz.? I am an educator, parent and taxpayer in the Upper Dauphin Area School District in Pennsylvania where my children attend school.? I have a son in the 8th grade and a daughter in 1st grade, and I teach high school chemistry.? My wife also teaches in the district, elementary learning support (grades K-2).? Due to the budget crunch last year, our district furloughed teachers and dropped positions that teachers retired from.? It saddens me to teach in these times after 22 years of experience.?

Due to budget cuts, my middle-school son went back to school with a computer program instead of a foreign language teacher for his World Languages class.? A teacher certified in physical education monitors the class while the students sit at computers trying to learn Spanish.? Our high school students will not be able to take French and will be limited to German and Spanish.? My son also doesn’t have a Science class—the math teacher was furloughed and the Food and Consumer Science teacher has to cover math classes since she also has 7-9 math certification.

My first-grade daughter no longer has computer class and limited library access—the librarian was furloughed and the middle school librarian has to “cover” the elementary library as well. The district has no nurse at all for the last 45 minutes of the elementary school day. The superintendent’s response is that was that we have people trained in CPR—not comforting to me as a parent, knowing that emergencies can happen at the end of the day as easily as they can any other time.

Our district also cut a high school English teacher, so our students have larger class sizes in a critical subject area. We also cut a music position, making it more difficult for students to participate at all ages.

I see quality education in our district disintegrating — and, those that suffer the most are our children. They need our support.

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America’s education system has always been one of our greatest sources of strength and global economic competitiveness, as well as the engine of incredible progress in science, technology and the arts. We cannot expect to train our children for the high-skilled jobs of today, or for the opportunities of the future, without investments in a world-class education system.? States are still reeling from the recession and their budget woes are having a devastating impact on schools and students. That is why the federal government needs to provide more emergency education funding to states and localities.

As many as 280,000 education jobs are on the chopping block in the upcoming school year due to continued state budget constraints. As Todd’s personal story shows, these cuts have a significant impact on children’s education, through the reduction of school days, increased class size, and the elimination of key classes and services. The President’s plan will support state and local efforts to retain, rehire, and hire early childhood, elementary, and secondary educators (including teachers, guidance counselors, classroom assistants, afterschool personnel, tutors, and literacy and math coaches).

These efforts will help ensure that schools are able to keep teachers in the classroom, preserve or extend the regular school day and school year, and also support important after-school activities.? These funds would help states and localities such as Upper Dauphin School District avoid and reverse their layoffs now, requiring that funds be drawn down quickly. Under the President’s proposal, $1,155,300,000 in funds would go to Pennsylvania to support the hiring and retention up to 14,400 educator jobs. The American Jobs Act will ensure that Todd’s children can go back to their schools with?all?of the teachers, classes, and support they need to compete in the 21st?century economy. Now is the time to invest in our teachers and our students’ knowledge in technology, computers, foreign languages, and other key skills that districts across the country are cutting.

President Obama believes that America cannot win the future if its teachers are not where they belong—at the chalkboards or the Smart Boards in our classrooms, teaching our nation’s children. That’s why he put forward a plan—the American Jobs Act—that will provide support for nearly 400,000 education jobs, enough for states to avoid harmful layoffs, rehire tens of thousands of teachers who lost their jobs over the past three years, preserve or extend the regular school day and school year, and support important after-school activities.

Teachers and the American Jobs Act Stories:

Putting Our Teachers Back to Work: Stephanie Harris Walter?

Please share your story?about how the American Jobs Act will positively impact you or your community.

Todd Smeltz is a member of the?National Education Association– a supporter of the American Jobs Act.

Brad Jenkins is an Associate Director at the Office of Public Engagement.

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Among Twists in Budget Woes, Tensions Over Teaching the Deaf

Scores of deaf and hard-of-hearing children and their families assembled to complain in American Sign Language. Parents also have confronted new board members of the state’s school for the deaf in pointed, awkward exchanges. And more objections are expected when the board convenes next month for what had, until now, been ordinary meetings on routine school matters.

At the root of the tension is a debate that stretches well beyond Indiana: Will sign language and the nation’s separate schools for the deaf be abandoned as more of the deaf turn to communicating, with help from fast-evolving technology, through amplified sounds and speech?

And in the struggle to balance depleted budgets, Indiana and other states, like Kansas, North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota and West Virginia have called for cuts on many fronts in recent years, including for state schools for the deaf — a group of institutions with long, rich traditions.

Some advocates for the schools now worry that financial concerns could push the debate toward sending deaf children to “mainstream” schools, which would, in the eyes of some, ultimately encourage methods of communication other than American Sign Language, or A.S.L.

“Speaking and listening classrooms across the nation are known for their forced exclusion of A.S.L. and expressly forbid any contact with the culturally deaf adult role models,” Marvin Miller, president of the Indiana Association of the Deaf, who is deaf, said in an e-mail interview.

“We view this as inflicting violence upon thousands of innocent deaf and hard-of-hearing babies — taking away their language and pinning their hopes on dismal success rates of cochlear implants,” he added.

The two approaches — sign language and the so-called listening and spoken language approach — are both in wide use.?Many people do not see them in conflict with one another, and view the two approaches simply as a matter of personal choice.? But shrinking state budgets, with less money to be spent on programs for the deaf, are hardening the debate because they are turning preferences into policy decisions.

Advocates for those who use technology to?hear and speak say their option can be one answer to the budget constraints.

“Kids in the mainstream save society, taxpayers, a significant amount of money in the short-term and in the long-term when it comes to being integrated into the hearing world,” said Naomi S. Horton, executive director of Hear Indiana, which supports families who use listening and spoken language to communicate.

“There is a financial benefit, but at the end of the day it has to be a parent’s choice,” Ms. Horton said.

Here, the clash began this spring, when Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, filled four empty slots on the board of the Indiana School for the Deaf, which was founded more than 165 years ago and promotes what it calls a bilingual, bicultural philosophy that includes American Sign Language and English. Some 340 students go to the school, which provides outreach services to hundreds of others.

Parents complained that three of the appointees were not themselves deaf. Two of the new board members (both of whom have a deaf or hard-of-hearing child) drew particular anger because families said they were dues-paying members of Hear Indiana and were perceived to favor an educational approach of amplifying sound and encouraging speech over sign language.

The appointments, they said, signaled that the state was now picking sides — against American Sign Language and deaf culture.

“It has become crystal clear that these selections were premeditated, planned and executed in a style befitting the most savvy of politics,” said Kim Bianco Majeri, who is deaf and whose daughters — one deaf and one hard of hearing — attend the Indiana School for the Deaf.

Ms. Majeri said the school provided them with language skills of all sorts but also the nurturing environment and true peers that she said she missed out on.

“My husband and I grew up mainstreamed and we would never wish that on our children,” she said.

Two of the board members who have faced criticism did not respond to requests for comment. A third, Mary Susan Buhner, whose husband serves on the board of Hear Indiana, declined to respond to specific questions about her views, but she did say she believes in the?stated mission of the Indiana School for the Deaf to be “the premier comprehensive center providing education, services and resources” for Indiana’s deaf.

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In Budget Crunch, Science Fairs Struggle to Survive

Things do not always go as planned at the competition, which one teacher called a “track-and-field event for nerds.” But a high school sophomore, John Hickernell, said he was happy just to be at the event, the Illinois Science Olympiad, after one team had to back out at the last minute because members could not raise enough money to attend.

“I’m upset about my event,” John said. “Imagine not even getting to compete at all.”

Securing financing for these competitions and for the time-honored local science fair has become increasingly difficult because of the poor economy, organizers say. Sponsors have dropped out of local science fairs, while some schools are scaling back extracurricular activities, including science programs, because of state budget cuts.

In Missouri, two prominent science fairs in the St. Louis area are having financing problems after losing corporate donations. One California school district did not have a science fair last school year, and Louisiana’s statewide competition was almost canceled last spring.

“The donations are down dramatically this year,” said Jill Malcom, the director of the Mastodon Art and Science Regional Fair, one of the St. Louis-area competitions. “We are doing whatever it takes to keep the fair going.”

Science programs are more important than ever because the country needs students who are interested in science to compete in the global economy, said Paula Golden, the director of the Broadcom Foundation, which finances a prominent national science competition for middle school students.

“Without a body of young people who are innovators and scientists and engineers, we cannot sustain any kind of growth economically,” Ms. Golden said. “It is a national crisis.”

The Society for Science & the Public, a nonprofit group that holds an annual international science fair, does not track local science fair financing issues, but a spokesman said the group had received feedback regarding problems.

“I certainly hear all the time that schools are challenged to have science fairs — for financial reasons or because they have to focus on testing,” said the spokesman, Rick Bates.

The Alvord Unified School District in Riverside, Calif., did not hold a science fair last school year because of budget cuts. Students and teachers were disappointed, but officials had to make cuts somewhere, said Cynthia Glover Woods, the district’s director for elementary education.

The district did not plan to hold a science fair this school year until the Alvord Educational Foundation stepped in and offered to find sponsors. The president of the foundation, Grey Frandsen, said he could not believe that students were missing out on a formative experience.

“Here in Southern California, our economy has been decimated,” he said. “The science and technology fields are some areas of bright hope.”

In Louisiana, the regional and statewide science fairs scheduled for last spring were almost canceled. When Louisiana State University lost financing in the state budget, officials eliminated the programs but then reinstated them with private financing.

The Academy of Science — St. Louis Science Fair, scheduled for the spring, lost half of its financing when the pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, withdrew as a sponsor after giving $65,000 last school year. Organizers said they were hopeful that another donor would come forward.

The fair’s director, Mary E. Burke, pointed to the two students it sent to an international science fair last school year as examples of how fairs inspire students. One student tested the DNA of a plant he found while traveling in China and determined that it was an unidentified species. Another student got an internship at a laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis after she did a project about why some of her relatives had diabetes and others did not.

“We tell the families that when your child goes ‘huh’ and wonders about this or that, write it down. That is a science project,” Ms. Burke said. “Those are the projects they really love that make them realize science is fun.”

The Mastodon fair has lost dozens of sponsors. Its budget has dropped from $250,000 last year to $118,000 for the March fair. Ms. Malcom, the fair’s director, is scrounging for money to buy the $3 medals for second- and third-place winners and worrying about how to fund scholarships.

“This event really can be the spark that changes a kid’s life,” Ms. Malcom said.

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