By Steve Walker
The unintended
consequences of the legislature’s crusade to extract deep cuts in the education
budget in the last session are already having a major impact on Texas Public
Schools this year and will continue onto next school year. In this session if
they don’t restore billions of dollars to the districts, it will only get
worse.
When you cut thousands of
teachers to balance the state budget, it is a recipe for the inevitable
explosion of huge class sizes that are exploding as we speak.
As a retired classroom
teacher, I can assure you an adverse outcome on the quality of education of
those students in those over-crowded classrooms.
In my last two years of a
four year term as a Justice of the Peace dealing with truancy, disorderly
students and dropouts in six school districts, I predicted my caseload would
increase when the budget cuts materialized due to the vast overcrowding. The
number of students cited for fighting, disrupting class and worse became a
reality in my courtroom.
Common sense tells you
that more students squeezed into a classroom only encourage more fights,
disruptions, truancy and lack of learning.
Back in the 70s as a young
teacher, it was not unusual for me to have 30-35 high school or middle school
students. Over the years I taught both. I actually taught one Freshman English class
of 42 students at Roosevelt
High School .
Many of them were forced
to sit on the floor, the heaters by the window, makeshift tables with folding
chairs or they stood on occasion. If it wasn’t for the fire code I would have
seen even more students in my classroom. When a student was absent, another
took his seat.
The more students that
were absent, the better chance the remaining students were able to sit in a
desk! It was a great excuse for students to skip class. Do we really want to go
back to those days?
That is a blueprint for
disaster! As a certified Special Education teacher, I can also tell you that self-contained
classrooms full of special needs students are already being mainstreamed en
masse into the general population as a result of the laying off teachers and
untrained teachers (lack of funding) will be dealing with those students as
well.
In the long run it will
cost the taxpayer more than the savings the legislature thinks they accomplished.
Good intentions sometimes have adverse outcomes.
Let’s hope the current
legislature will do due diligence and restore most of the funds they cut so test
scores will improve and the next generation of students will have a chance for
a better life.
As always, what I write is
“Just a Thought.”
Steve Walker is a Vietnam
Veteran and former Justice of the Peace and Journalist. His column “Ask the
Judge” column ran in La Prensa for the last two years.
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