Hindsight

I started this blog two years ago. Hard for me to believe. It is even harder to believe that I have 63 posts and 5,000 viewers. Who would have thunk the ramblings and rantings of a little old lady would be read at all?


One year ago I posted “All Fool’s Eve” expressing the hope that our legislature was just kidding when it spoke of budget cuts, charters, new high stakes tests, etc. They were not kidding. Now, well into our first year of compressed funding, 25,000 educators laid off while 80,000 more kids showed up in school, it is hard to believe we are administering a new, more rigorous standardized high stakes test. Class size has grown, salaries frozen, budgets squeezed, and we are not only still at it, and we are striving to prepare our kids for a tougher test which we have already started to administer.

What’s the matter with us? The Legislature keeps saying do more with less and we keep doing more with less.

If we quit, who would teach? If we quit, who would be willing to be principal, superintendent? What would 4.5 million kids do every day? Where will their parents be when they realize child care costs more in a year than public education? (Well, it costs more unless you own a mansion and a lot of property.)

But, that’s not us. We won’t quit. We’ll keep trying to make do with what we have.

If you are not educator, you might ask yourself why not? Whatever your answers are, ask yourself what you will do when there aren’t any more of us. But by then, it would be too late.

Then, it will be hindsight.

Happy All Fools Day!