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Milwaukee schools to lay off 354 teachers

Boo Radley

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(CNN) -- In a budget-cutting move likely to be echoed around the country, Milwaukee Public Schools said Wednesday it will lay off 519 staff members -- including 354 teachers -- because of $84 million in state cuts and the system's efforts to control costs.

Milwaukee schools to lay off 354 teachers - CNN.com


Cuts have consequences.
 
(CNN) -- In a budget-cutting move likely to be echoed around the country, Milwaukee Public Schools said Wednesday it will lay off 519 staff members -- including 354 teachers -- because of $84 million in state cuts and the system's efforts to control costs.

Milwaukee schools to lay off 354 teachers - CNN.com


Cuts have consequences.

So does spending money you don't have on services that have gotten out of hand and ineffective.
 
The outrage should be directed at top heavy administrations and extraneous features, not the cuts. Cuts are necessary. Flat screen TVs and state-of-the-art football stadiums are not. Three assistants for the Superintendent are not. High-end, wifi capable charter buses for 1-hour trips are not necessary.

Not speaking for Milwaukee, but those are some of the issues we're seeing here....while they're cutting teachers and TAs left and right. Perhaps we should start holding districts accountable instead of falling for their crap about teachers being fired. They're doing it to make a point, and they're punishing our kids in the process. If they were serious they'd address the real areas of frivolity.
 
So does spending money you don't have on services that have gotten out of hand and ineffective.

You invest in what you care about. I am not suggesting we shouldn't be concerned about the budget, but if you care about education, you do something more targetted, more aimed at the problem, and not the things that will effect children and education the most. Again, it is about what do you care about.
 
and the GOP plan of making American's even dumber is going strong.. hey soon people will actually believe that Jesus rode dinos, the world is flat and the sun revolves around the Earth....

Cutting education is the single dumbest thing any government can do. Children are the future and having a massive uneducated population has never helped any nation.. unless of course you want to be like India and China...
 
The outrage should be directed at top heavy administrations and extraneous features, not the cuts. Cuts are necessary. Flat screen TVs and state-of-the-art football stadiums are not. Three assistants for the Superintendent are not. High-end, wifi capable charter buses for 1-hour trips are not necessary.

Not speaking for Milwaukee, but those are some of the issues we're seeing here....while they're cutting teachers and TAs left and right. Perhaps we should start holding districts accountable instead of falling for their crap about teachers being fired. They're doing it to make a point, and they're punishing our kids in the process. If they were serious they'd address the real areas of frivolity.

Here's my anecdote segment... my local grade school administration and BoE claimed that our little township school (which can handle a maximum of 550 students K-6) had a ballot referendum last year saying they needed among other things: New heater, new air conditioning (they don't have AC today), new roof, new gym, and wanted to spend 3 million additional on solar cells on the new roof, computers in all classrooms, media TV screens, a new high tech auditorium and a bunch of other stuff. Total: 17.8 million for 1 year just on the school. My township is not built up and has lots of farmland preservation - so not a lot of new construction comes in. Needless to say the voters threw it under the bus. The BoE comes back and claims they require the solar panels to get additional federal money and cut the 17.8 million down to 11 million on another special voting referendum 6 months later. That bites the dust. The BoE then moans that they cannot afford to keep the school open and are investigating closing the school and using shared resources across neighboring townships. This floats out there for a while, town meetings occur, low and behold another special vote comes up this time for 13 million. Voters laugh and kick that to the curb, showing the fear mongering to close the school wasn't believed by the voters. The BoE finally caves in and submits a bare bones repair bill of the school only, now at 4.5 million to repair the gym, replace the roof sans solar panels, new heater but no AC, and only a replacement of computers for staff and the media class - no all students. That passes.

Politicians even at the local level are trying to squeeze us no matter what - no matter how bad it is, how many homes in the local area are upside down on their mortgages or how many foreclosures there are, how much unemployment there is... doesn't matter. They only know one thing: MORE. Just as an aside: My township is run by Republicans.
 
The right wing war on the working class continues unabated. Why educate the adults of tomorrow when you can cut taxes on corporations today?
 
When those federal dollars dry up, they dry up. Shame on states for relying on it so much.

What's truly sad is that there is no need to cut teachers. It's the school administration staff that is vastly overbloated. Layers and layers of bureacracy that do nothing, but of course, their jobs won't be sacrificed, just the teachers.
 
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So does spending money you don't have on services that have gotten out of hand and ineffective.

I hope it is your children that no longer get an education.. Grats on advocating children and our nations future to pay for republican mismanagement..
 
I hope it is your children that no longer get an education.. Grats on advocating children and our nations future to pay for republican mismanagement..

That's quite a dramatic statement...and really it only addresses part of the issue (defunding). Why don't we confront the other portions: mismanagement of education funds, poor performance from educators, revisionist history/social studies/science texts (modified for both ideologies at various points in time), administrative bloat, solutions that haven't solved problems, etc.

We can lament lost money all day, but the money is still gone. Why don't we hold districts accountable and demand that they use X% or X-amount of funding specifically for education of the pupil (textbooks, supplies, teacher salaries, field trips, etc)? Why don't we hold them accountable and demand that they provided a balanced presentation of information in hotly contested subjects? Why don't we demand new solutions to the poverty deficit (one that hasn't changed much since the "war on poverty" began)?

Nah...let's just sit and point fingers and whine. That will help.
 
I hope it is your children that no longer get an education.. Grats on advocating children and our nations future to pay for republican mismanagement..

Well, first, the mismanagmeent in WI occured under Doyle, a democrat. Walker and the republicans had to come in and bring the house back in order.

Second, the MPS administrators have tried to get concessions from the unions, in which their members contribute 5.8% to their pensions (You know that thing all the unions claimed they agreed to?). If the union agreed, it would save over 200 teacher's jobs. What do you think the union's response was? No way! In other words, so much for putting the children first.

Third, why do you think the MPS system rushed through a contract agreement instead of waiting for Walker's budget repair bill, which would have allowed MPS to save many millions of dollars and avoided all teacher cuts?

Lastly, other schools in WI are seeing the opposite, since they waited for the budget repair bill to go through prior to agreeeing with the unions. For example, Kauakauna schools went from a 400K deficit to a 1.5 million dollar surplus due to the changes provided in the bill.
 
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The democrats left the state to get this done..
they were warned, but they insisted

bravo unions, hip hip horay
 
and the GOP plan of making American's even dumber is going strong.. hey soon people will actually believe that Jesus rode dinos, the world is flat and the sun revolves around the Earth....
You just -have- admire someone who, without shame -indeed, with great pride - spouts unmitigated partisan bigotry.
 
It is possible what Tess is a problem that we are seeing in many schools however one has to also look at statistics about how good our education is and try to go from there as well. In many countries for example they teach useful languages such as English. Here the main language still taught is Spanish. Instead of teaching a language that most of us will not use why not look at every states unique situation and teach a language that could be applied in business? For example in Kentucky I believe Japanese should be offered to students as not only do many younger people find the culture and the language interesting, but a great deal of the manufacturing taking place in Kentucky is with Japanese partners. In states where there is a high percentage of students interested in joining the military, why not teach Arabic? Also while math and science was never my best subject it is something that needs to be thoroughly taught better. Even longer school days could be beneficial.
 
wrong thread, oopsy.

I agree mostly, John
 
So too does mismanagement of public funds.


Tim-

yes, it does. And I would not object to better management. However, cutting just to eb cutting, without a plan, losing teachers, no, that says something about what we care about and it concerns me that education isn't a priority. At least not like it should be.
 
yes, it does. And I would not object to better management. However, cutting just to eb cutting, without a plan, losing teachers, no, that says something about what we care about and it concerns me that education isn't a priority. At least not like it should be.

It is the responsibility of the districts to plan for spending increase and cuts. It is the responsibility of the districts to decide how to handle a decrease in funds. The state government didn't tell the districts to jump to lay-offs before trying to negotiate cuts or freezes in pay, or cutting administration, or any other number of possible scenarios. The school systems are playing us to create outrage. They're taking it no more seriously than you think the government is.
 
Walker cut the districts budgets, but gave the districts all the necessary tools to save money and not have any ill effects. Unfortunately, MPS and the union has decided they didn't want to use those tools. Instead jumping to layoffs, that shouldn't have been necessary and trying to blame Walker.

The districts that are using those tools are not having to make cuts and some are actually hiring additional teachers and decreasing class sizes.

You are probably right, the unions and MPS are just playing to certain people.
 
The Kaukauna School District, in the Fox River Valley of Wisconsin near Appleton, has about 4,200 students and about 400 employees. It has struggled in recent times and this year faced a deficit of $400,000. But after the law went into effect, at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, school officials put in place new policies they estimate will turn that $400,000 deficit into a $1.5 million surplus. And it's all because of the very provisions that union leaders predicted would be disastrous.

In the past, teachers and other staff at Kaukauna were required to pay 10 percent of the cost of their health insurance coverage and none of their pension costs. Now, they'll pay 12.6 percent of the cost of their coverage (still well below rates in much of the private sector) and also contribute 5.8 percent of salary to their pensions. The changes will save the school board an estimated $1.2 million this year, according to board President Todd Arnoldussen.

Of course, Wisconsin unions had offered to make benefit concessions during the budget fight. Wouldn't Kaukauna's money problems have been solved if Walker had just accepted those concessions and not demanded cutbacks in collective bargaining powers?

"The monetary part of it is not the entire issue," says Arnoldussen, a political independent who won a spot on the board in a nonpartisan election. Indeed, some of the most important improvements in Kaukauna's outlook are because of the new limits on collective bargaining.

In the past, Kaukauna's agreement with the teachers union required the school district to purchase health insurance coverage from something called WEA Trust -- a company created by the Wisconsin teachers union. "It was in the collective bargaining agreement that we could only negotiate with them," says Arnoldussen. This year, WEA Trust told Kaukauna that it would face a significant increase in premiums.

Now, the collective bargaining agreement is gone, and the school district is free to shop around for coverage. And all of a sudden, WEA Trust has changed its position. "With these changes, the schools could go out for bids, and lo and behold, WEA Trust said, 'We can match the lowest bid,'" says Republican state Rep. Jim Steineke, who represents the area and supports the Walker changes. At least for the moment, Kaukauna is staying with WEA Trust, but saving substantial amounts of money.

Then there are work rules. "In the collective bargaining agreement, high school teachers only had to teach five periods a day, out of seven," says Arnoldussen. "Now, they're going to teach six." In addition, the collective bargaining agreement specified that teachers had to be in the school 37 1/2 hours a week. Now, it will be 40 hours.

The changes mean Kaukauna can reduce the size of its classes -- from 31 students to 26 students in high school and from 26 students to 23 students in elementary school. In addition, there will be more teacher time for one-on-one sessions with troubled students. Those changes would not have been possible without the much-maligned changes in collective bargaining.

Union curbs rescue a Wisconsin school district | Byron York | Politics | Washington Examiner
 
You invest in what you care about. I am not suggesting we shouldn't be concerned about the budget, but if you care about education, you do something more targetted, more aimed at the problem, and not the things that will effect children and education the most. Again, it is about what do you care about.

I get so sick of hearing this sheeezz …. you do realize that we spend more per student then any country in the world don't you ? We should have the best educated students shouldn't we ? Why don't we if it's just a matter of money ??

I just fail to understand liberals who's ideas are always the same .. just throw more money at a problem, thats always their first fix, don't they realize (obviously they don't) that this is one of the causes of our spending woes in both state and federal government?

Sometimes it's best to take a step back .. and find out what the problems facing us are .. then find the best ways of fixing them …. Just spending (or as you like to use investing) in our education system hasn't helped the students … yet as a liberal your first response is to spend more .. I happen to agree with tessaesque on looking first to what can be cut that won't in any way hurt the education of the student, make those cuts first then see what if anything is still needed. This laying off of teachers is nothing more than a vialed attempt to vilify Walker, and has nothing to do with budget cuts or concern for the students.

Both sides need to get off their collective bottoms and find solutions … solutions that work for the good of whatever we are trying to accomplish, for years and years our answers have been just keep spending it has to get better …. well .. it hasn't … and our spending has caught up with us.
 
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