All news
Advocates: Bills will save thousands of education jobs in Wisconsin
Posted: 5/11/2010 2:45:00 PM
In Beloit, where test scores are on the rise, budget deficits are prompting the layoffs of about a dozen school staff positions, bringing a potential step backward for the district, said Tim Vedra, a math teacher at Merrill Elementary School in Beloit.
Vedra, who is also president of the Beloit Education Association, said federal bills poised to bring $400 million to Wisconsin will help keep the state’s schools strong. Separate pieces of legislation in both houses of Congress would make additional federal resources available to school districts to retain education jobs.
“We absolutely need the federal government to help us through the tough economic times or our students will be the ones who ultimately suffer,” Vedra said. “Being able to receive some of the federal dollars would be able to allow us to stop making those cuts and hopefully be able to retain some of those teachers as we wait for the economy to turn around.”
Vedra is joining administrators, parents and other educators across the state in supporting the Keep Our Educators Working Act and the Local Jobs for America Act – federal bills aimed at earmarking $23 billion for a national Education Jobs Fund. Wisconsin would receive $400 million of that, according to State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers, bringing funds to districts to save and restore thousands of critical education jobs.
“Every place you go from Milwaukee to the northern reaches of Wisconsin there’s threatened layoffs of teachers and other folks that work with Wisconsin’s children across the state,” Evers said. “Layoffs are not just difficult for the people that are laid off but clearly it impacts kids’ ability to learn. As class sizes get larger, as classes get cut, the kind of long term damage that can be done can be real significant.
“It’s critical that we get this money, that we advocate for it, that we save jobs that are on the chopping block and hopefully restore some of the jobs that already have been lost,” Evers added. “Everybody knows the most important variable in a student’s achievement is a teacher and the folks that are working with the teachers in the schools, and we just can’t afford to lose anymore.”
Vedra said the bills would bring a stabilizing resource for districts such as Beloit.
“We are currently making great strides in our achievement scores here in Beloit, and we need to keep our schools strong because strong schools build strong communities,” Vedra added. “We know that our children benefit most when they have small class sizes, so that they can receive individual attention from highly qualified staff. Making cuts is not going to be able to allow us to achieve that. It’s going to increase class sizes.”
Parents also are advocating for federal funding. Wisconsin PTA President Roxanne Starks said the federal resources will help protect aspects of a well-rounded education such as art, music, physical education and foreign language classes.
“This is our investment for the future because we do need those educators to teach our children,” Starks said, adding that the layoffs being seen across the state amount to a wake-up call to fix Wisconsin’s school funding formula. “In the long run we need to look more at how to better fund the schools in the state of Wisconsin than what we currently have.”
For more on the Keep Our Educators Working Act and the Local Jobs for America Act, visit these online resources: