Throughout the month of August, The Texas Tribune will feature 31 ways Texans' lives will change come Sept. 1, the date most bills passed by the Legislature — including the dramatically reduced budget — take effect. Check out the Trib's story calendar here.
The Texas Tribune - DAY 1: Thousands of Texas teachers will not have jobs to return to in the fall:
Just a month before the end of the school year, Bryan McClintock, a special education teacher with the Little Elm Independent School District, was told that his contract would not be renewed in the fall. McClintock had anticipated he might be laid off because he has only taught for two years. He saw the writing on the wall during the special legislative session, when lawmakers passed a school finance plan that cut $4 billion from districts statewide.
Though legislators encouraged administrators to keep as much money as possible in classrooms, the majority of public education dollars are spent on personnel — meaning job cuts can't be avoided. During the legislative session, The Associated Press reported that up to 100,000 of the state's 330,000 teachers might lose their positions. Officials at the Texas State Teachers Association estimate that about 12,000 teachers have lost their jobs so far, and they warn more teachers could be laid off in the second year of budget cuts. The Austin Independent School District has already given pink slips to nearly 500 employees.
Read the full article @ The Texas Tribune .
A new Gallup poll finds, overall, that only 34 percent of Americans express a great deal of confidence in the nation's public schools, continuing a record low that began in 2005. In the 1970s and 80s, that number never dipped below 40 percent. Forty-three percent of Democrats said they were confident in the school system, compared with 19 percent of Independents and 33 percent of Republicans. People tended to rate their local schools better than the overall system. See the poll's full results here.
Why have the American people lost confidence in our public school system? Because so much of what the read about public schools is negative.