Brothers and sisters,
We need you to attend the next School Board meeting, Tuesday evening at 7 at City Hall. (Please note the different location.)
Teachers and classified employees will be attending and speaking to the Board.
We will be encouraging the Culver City Unified School District to rethink its misguided budget-cutting plan.
Currently, CCUSD's response to the budget crunch is to shorten the school year (they have proposed 9 unpaid furlough days for next year), and to cut teachers and support staff.
So far, the cut list looks like this:
• 19.2 teacher positions (with another 6 under consideration for next year);
• Over 30 classified positions, including classroom aides, library staff, security officers and clerical staff, and
• ZERO administrative positions.
Teachers and support staff are willing to do our part to get CCUSD through this crisis. After all, we agreed to take 5 unpaid furlough days this year. But over 50 cuts to teachers and support staff without a single cut to administration?
Is that “sharing the pain”?
It's unfair, yes, but more importantly, these cuts affect students!
Many districts start the cutting process at the District office and then move reluctantly to the school sites in an attempt to protect students from the cuts. CCUSD has taken the opposite approach: Eliminate teachers and support staff, but 12-month managers with six-figure salaries and paid vacations must be protected!
The Culver City Federation of Teachers and the Assn. of Classified Employees have pooled our resources and purchased some big bright red tee-shirts. We will either get them to you ahead of time or have them for you at the door.
You may wish to wear your own red shirt if we run out!
Please bring supportive parents as well. Many of our parents do not know that these cuts will result in larger class sizes or that instructional aides and library staff are being eliminated.
We need their support now before any other cuts are approved.
Finally, CCUSD deserves credit for maintaining programs in music and the arts at a time when many districts have cut back in these disciplines.
Rumors are swirling, though, that elementary music may be at risk. We hesitate to spread and fuel rumors, but CCUSD needs to step up and affirm that retiring music teachers will be replaced and that elementary music education will survive.
I'll send out another reminder prior to Tuesday night.
In the meantime, your homework assignment is to get one other teacher and one parent to join you Tuesday night.
This is our Wisconsin Moment. You won't need to spend the night at City Hall — unless you want to —but we need you to remind CCUSD to make cuts as far away from the kids as possible.
In Unity,
dave
Mr. Mielke, President of the Teachers Union, may be contacted at davidmielke@ccusd.org
