Thank You Budget Cuts

04.25.2010

We went out for my mother-in-law’s birthday today and she and I caught up on some of the insanity that she faces at work. She is a counselor at a public high school with LAUSD and the story she parlayed to me made my blood boil. (I am so happy I didn’t pursue the teaching route. Oh my, am I happy.)

Thanks to the budget cuts, her counseling department is losing 2 people. So instead of 6 counselors (which already was pinching them), they will have 4. Each counselor will now be required to take care of over 600 students each, checking their class status, grade status, career and college preparation, keep up with any probations, IEPs (special ed requirements), etc. Whoever’s reading this imagine yourself in that position please. In an 8 hour work day, you’re required to deal with all of that (not counting any interruptions you might have when a student is acting out in class and you are called to handle the situation). And you must deal with all of this, including a hazardous work environment, all of this for about $40,000 a year to $60,000 (depending on your status with LAUSD). Attractive, eh? My former boss makes about $70K - $80K to sit on her ass all day…I’d certainly choose that over the above choice.

So the story my MIL told me was about how 2 different students were giving her a whole lot of attitude with statements like, “I don’t have to listen to you” or “Who are you to tell me what to do?” or, even better, a student defiantly eating an unfinished box of pizza that he illegally got delivered to school by his homies because he didn’t want to throw it away. And apparently that was more important than getting to class – for which he was already late. He just stood there in front of her stuffing his face with the pizza refusing to throw out the box.

What do you do? How the hell to you deal with this? How do you go through the motions at work, deal with the stress of everything involved and go home in a good mood? We are creating a sick, toxic-filled environment for everyone involved.

This kind of shit drives me crazy especially because it contributes to a vicious cycle. These kids come from damaged families and are filled with hate so they’re taking it out on other adults because they’ve learned to not trust them.

And these kids come from families who keep having kids. And they keep having kids because the god damn Catholic church refuses to accept contraception. Or parents are in denial that their kids are having sex and so they don’t arm them with the knowledge about contraception.

Now the school budget is being cut even more decreasing the amount of security on campuses, the amount of administrators, teachers and support staff. And my mother-in-law predicted, and rightly so I think, that they’re going to keep cutting it over the next few years and won’t stop until another Columbine occurs. It’s going to take a mass shooting where mass amounts of death occur for people to wake up and realize how broken our education system is. And who knows if even that will happen because all that ever seems to ignite is “Who cares that people died? Don’t take away my 2^nd Amendment right to bear arms!”