Photo courtesy WRAL[/caption]Educators locally and statewide have by now scratched the L-word from their students’ civics vocabulary lists as their first week is well underway without decisive action from state legislators on spending levels for the new school year.
The ironic part is that this L-word — of all words — is most central to what should have been happening all summer in Raleigh — but there has been little sign of it.
The news from the hallowed halls came this week that state House and Senate members likely will not agree on a budget and approve it in time to make their already extended deadline of Aug. 31. Some insiders are saying it could be after Labor Day before the state knows how much money it plans to spend and on what.
This parliamentary tommyrot is becoming critically noxious for schools and classrooms because a central sticking point in budget talks is funding for education, specifically for teacher pay, driver’s education and teaching assistants.
Here in Pitt County, school officials already have laid off 11 teaching assistants and left 14 vacant positions unfilled because the temporary budget resolution now in place hasn’t the funding for them. The Senate version of the new budget, which seems to have the less rocky road to acceptance, is even more drastic, cutting nearly 8,600 TA positions statewide, although it reportedly would add 2,000 to teacher rolls, ostensibly to reduce class sizes.
Many local assistants stand in limbo this week not knowing whether they have job security. But the by-now pointless debate continues unabated: Cut assistants and add teachers, or leave assistants in place.
Certainly there are arguments either way on that issue as well as the others, but it’s more than simply difficult to justify this kind of indecision. Educators across North Carolina rightfully are wringing their hands as they prepare the week’s lessons plans; families are getting their kids ready for classrooms whose landscape remains in doubt.
What has been decided is the total amount the new budget will allocate: $21.74 billion, a number small enough to suggest that cuts likely are coming, but as yet no one knows where they will be. This is where the lack of the L-word is most telling.
One of the state’s largest and certainly most important enterprises is being held hostage because a group of purportedly wise heads can’t find a way to bridge their differences and take action based on solid fact, research and common sense.
During the last election, didn’t office seekers tout their connection to the L-word? Didn’t voters gravitate toward that light? Yes, well, apparently it has turned out that both sides of our legislative aisle are failing this quiz: The correct spelling is “leadership.”
