Arizona education suffers due to legislature's budget

As I was growing up, my dad always gave me one piece of advice that has stuck with me throughout my life.  He said, "It's better to work with your mind than it is your back."  My family pushed my sister and me to further our education beyond what my parents had accomplished.  I was the first member of my father's family to graduate college and my sister was right behind me.  To say that education was not important to us would be an understatement.

This is why it is so hard to live in Arizona.  I keep seeing the effects of elected officials (specifically Republicans) who, it seems, do not care for education.  I have already written once on the subject but since this week was the start of the school year for Tucson's largest school district, Tucson Unified School District, I felt that I needed to share some of my experiences as a teacher to shine more light on an increasingly disturbing trend. 

Because of the budget cuts, several teachers were let go from our school and others retired or transferred for various reasons.  Since some of their positions could not filled, this left us with a dramatically reduced faculty.  Gone were some of our most experienced teachers, some of whom have taught at our school for over 30 years.  Gone were teachers who could stand in front of a group of 30 freshmen and whip them into shape for high school.  Gone were educators in some of the most in demand areas for teachers, like special education and science.  Losing such high quality teachers is a slow but inevitable process, but this year was an especially difficult one.

The loss of teachers not only hurt because of the quality of their instruction, but because it forced extremely large class sizes onto teachers' plates, including several newer teachers.  The teachers' agreement with the district says that no teacher can have more than 35 students per class or more than 158 students total.  I will note that this can be ignored until September 7th when a process called leveling occurs.  This leveling is important as larger class sizes makes quality education difficult.  It is tough to make sure each student is getting the individualization he or she requires while maintaining a well-run classroom when dealing with large classes.  Right now, I am currently at 163 students total, with two classes over the 35 student limit.  Other teachers have it much worse with student counts in the high 170s.  Class sizes are extremely large for some teachers, such as 51 in an English Language Development class or 60 in a Spanish class.  While we know our numbers can be over the cap now, it can make management more difficult in the future months as students may fall through the cracks now during the most critical time of the year.

Large class sizes are difficult to manage but are just as hard to prepare.  Some classes do not have enough tables or chairs for students, forcing them to sit on the floor or on counter tops.  The budget crunch has affected ordering of important school supplies.  Items like books, paper, cleaning supplies and other essentials are in difficult to purchase.  Teachers, who normally buy things for their class out of their own pockets anyway, have to spend even more of their hard-earned dollars for their students.

I know that during this recession, the state has to make difficult decisions to elevate a large deficit.  However, I really feel it is such a disservice to the future of the state to leave its educational system like this.  Fortunately Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has been working hard at trying to not cut education funding even more than it has already been cut.  Too bad the State Legislature does not seem to have the same idea.  The 2010 budget they recently passed is the same budget that was previously vetoed by Brewer and does not have the sales tax increase proposal that Brewer wants to help shore up funding for state services like education.  The budget would have more than $500 million in increased cuts to public education as well as strip away vital protections for educators.

Instead of giving wasteful tax cuts to corporations and trying to push harmful tax increases on lower and middle income families, I wish the State Legislature would take a moment to listen to the people of Arizona and say yes to quality public education.  After all, if the legislators continue on this path, I think the voters will follow my dad's words and put them to work with their backs instead of their minds.

Check out: A friend of my wife and me, David Morales, is the Tucson Science Examiner.  Check out his articles!