A Race to the Bottom
"As the demand for budget cuts, furlough days, salary freezes, and waivers mount up, the momentum for improving public schools or even maintaining quality learning opportunities is being lost," says MEA President Chris Galgay.
"Rather than engaging in President Obama's highly touted Race to The Top for America's schools, Maine is entering into a Race To The Bottom."
In response to Commissioner of Education Susan Gendron's comments in the Portland Press Herald calling for a salary freeze and increasing student-teacher ratios as solutions to budget problems, Galgay told her that:
. Maine's educational system has virtually NONE of the things in place that she believes to be representative of high quality educational systems.
. Maine is now headed in the wrong direction due to the lack of adequate funding.
. Increasing class sizes and freezing teacher salaries in a state where salaries are 43rd in the nation will make things worse, not better.
. Every member of the educational community should be defending and promoting public education during these times when strong educational systems are needed, and not advocating for cuts and freezes.
Galgay emphasized the necessity of being honest with the public about these ongoing cuts and their real, detrimental effect on the quality of our schools.
The immediate challenge is dealing with declining state revenues which translated into cuts in state aid to K-12 schools and higher education. If proposed budget reductions are carried out, funding for K-12 schools will have dropped by $110 million from 2008 through 2011. Cuts to the University of Maine System total $15 million while Community Colleges get a $4.2 million hit.
Rather than take these massive cuts, MEA is urging Governor Baldacci and legislators to enhance revenues. When faced with a similar economic shock in1993, Governor John McKernan and the legislature added a temporary one cent increase to the sales tax, applied a10% surcharge to the income tax, and "pushed" one monthly payment for state aid to k-12 schools from August to September.
Although everything else is dwarfed by the funding issue, MEA has an active legislative calendar dealing with school consolidation, federal state stabilization funds, and the application for the federal Race To The Top program (RTTP).
MEA will work to refine the school consolidation law and make it work for those schools that were disadvantaged by or reluctant to comply with the first round of consolidation.
For more information on the funding crisis as it develops, check your weekly MEA Newbrief and this web page
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