MILLENNIAL YOUTH PHOTO ILLUSTRATION

STATEWIDE BUDGET CUTS ENDANGER TEACHER JOBS AND STUDENT PROGRAMS

BY ANDREW CULLEN

Capital Region students have a lot to worry about.

Joseph Nicholas, a junior at Schenectady High School, worries that he might not be able to play lacrosse or run cross-country next year.

Samantha, a sophomore at Mohonassen High School, is afraid the district will cut the Boces vocational education program in which she can earn a cosmetology license while still in high school.

Both of these are possibilities under the Governor’s 2010-11 budget. If passed, 99 percent of school districts would see state aid cuts next year. Statewide, the cuts average 6.7 percent, or $1.4 billion.

“If we get huge cuts like they are saying, I don’t know how it will be anything but bad,” says Samantha.

TEACHERS’ JOBS AT RISK
According to a report, “Shortchanging Students: How the State Budget Crisis Will Change Our Schools,” conducted by the New York State Council of School Superintendents and the New York State School Boards Association, 77 percent of surveyed districts would have to lay off an average of 4.1 percent of teachers under the Governor’s proposed budget.

At that rate, nearly 6,300 teachers outside New York City could lose their jobs, the report said.

Sara Defruscio, a middle school student in Schenectady City School District, is concerned about the potential effects.

“If you cut teachers, we’ll have more kids in a class,” she says. “It’s already hard sometimes to pay attention in the class sizes we have. ”

“Why can’t teachers give back some of their check,” says Daishon, a junior at Albany High School. “Wouldn’t everyone having less pay be better than some teachers having no pay.  Then they wouldn’t have to fire teachers and they wouldn’t need to cut our clubs.”

Last year, there were about 5,000 cuts. This year’s estimate is between 15,000 and 20,000 teacher and staff layoffs, says Carl Korn, a spokesperson for New York State United Teachers, a union that represents more than 600,000 teachers and school staff.

Teachers in New York’s more than 700 school districts are working with their unions and school boards to restructure contracts and find other savings, says Korn. It’s difficult to answer what teachers will do because those decisions are made at the local level.

“Teachers want to ensure that students have extracurricular activities. At the same time, that’s not a substitute for the state’s failure to pay an adequate share of education costs,” says Korn, adding that teachers are already giving their time to provide extracurricular activities—and in many cases, with no pay.

NO EASY CHOICES
In addition to numerous job losses, school districts will have to use a combination of strategies to cope with the loss of money.

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