Going to the Mattresses

The budget cuts to the school district that I work for are huge, and many people are losing their jobs. The parents are beginning to wake up and realize that over the years the administrators have been taking huge pay increases. Now with the loss of state aid, our school district has to make cuts, and the superintendent wants to cut lots of teacher jobs, custodians and still take a 2% pay increase he was supposed to get a 4% increase. The parents are banding together and fighting for teachers, assistants and custodians and asking that supervisors, superintendents and administrators not take pay increases. They also would like to see teachers take a pay freeze before the programs are cut. I wish that these request would be listened to but I think that what will happen is that the people at the top will take their raises and they will increase our taxes and our children will be the ultimate victims!

Why do I call it going to the mattresses? Well because in "You've Got Mail" Kathleen Kelly also goes to war with the big bad Fox Books store. In her case she loses. I hope that we win and some teachers job's will be saved, and that children will not be the victim, but I feel in my heart that this will not be the case.

It is hard to go to work when everyone is upset, people are losing their jobs, people are crying in the office, parents are in the halls complaining. I had wanted to finish out my few months of work left being happy, enjoying the job I loved. Instead my eyes have been opened to how political schools are, how it still ends with who at the top is greedy and takes money for themselves instead putting money towards programs that would benefit the future generation.
I have realized I'm to fault as much as all others. Over the years I went to budget meetings and looked at what would be cut and voted for a budget without looking at what was being given to top administrators. Now I feel many things that they threatened to cut, really didn't need to be cut if they were willing to not take huge pay increases. Yet I along with others fell into their scare tactics and now we have administrators being paid huge amounts of money and teachers and janitors and assistants losing their jobs. And even now the teachers ask the parents please pass this budget so they won't fire more of us. But in doing that don't we give them their raises? It is unfair that our taxes go up, and they get raises and our children are being put last.