Good Response to Corbett's Talking Points on Public Schools - Arts Cuts are the School Board's Fault

[JPZenger]

http://yinzercation.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/the-governors-rash/

The above blog has been hard hitting in regards to addressing Corbett's cuts to public school funding. The full post and previous posts are worth reading. Here's an excerpt from today's post. This is in response to continued uproar over the award given to Corbett for lifetime achievement in arts and arts education.

"Mrs. Corbett waded into this fray on Saturday night during her acceptance speech at the Pittsburgh Opera gala. You will notice that this blog has never once mentioned Mrs. Corbett, as we are solely concerned with her husband’s role as governor and his policies. But the governor apparently handed his talking points to his wife that evening, and was content to have her remark that cutting arts education “ultimately becomes a decision by each school district on how to prioritize its spending.”

And these are literally the governor’s talking points. We’ve just learned that as the opera controversy went viral last week, the governor had his special assistant, Dennis Roddy, send a memo over to the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. That would be the same Dennis Roddy, a former Post-Gazette columnist, who weighed in on this blog a few months ago, posting the governor’s anti-public-education messages without disclosing his new affiliation as the governor’s paid mouthpiece.

The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts then provided those talking points to the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council (GPAC), which sent out an “Advocacy and Cultural Policy” alert to 230 arts organizations in the region. On Monday, GPAC board member, founder, and longtime Pittsburgh arts leader, Charlie Humphrey, resigned in disgust over that alert, saying, “To send email to the GPAC membership under the heading ‘Arts Advocacy Alerts,’ and then claim to not be taking a position, stretches credulity.”

That alert included ...Corbett’s tired and patently false assertion that he has actually increased funding to public schools.

GPAC alert makes it clear that Roddy’s name was attached to the information they received and redistributed.... it’s pretty clear Roddy’s fingerprints are all over these talking points and that they are coming directly from the Governor’s office.

That same GPAC bullet item includes the governor’s new talking point: “The decisions to cut arts teachers are not being made at the state level by the Governor, but at the local level by school boards.” The Governor had this information distributed via Dennis Roddy and the Arts Council last week, had his wife repeat it at the Opera gala on Saturday night, and dropped it into his speech at the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce yesterday.

In essence, the Governor is saying: ...it’s their fault if they are cutting arts education so don’t blame me. Of course, the Governor has in fact cut $1 BILLION from our public schools, forcing them to make horrendous decisions. School districts are not just cutting the arts, but AP classes, foreign languages, librarians, special education, tutoring programs – and in many places, core subjects like math, English, science, and social studies."

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Roddy was also known for writing highly favorable articles about Corbett as a reporter for the Post-Gazette during the governor campaign, right before he was hired to be Corbett's pr man.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=175x17991

[JPZenger]

1. "You're out of touch, my baby, my poor ol' fashioned baby, baby baby you're out of time"

Yesterday, One Term Tommy said that if school districts don't like his billion dollar budget cuts and his massive diversion of their funding to overpay cybercharter schools, they should just "use their reserves."

First, most school districts ARE using up their reserves. That will hurt their bond rating and cause them to have to pay much higher interest rates if they need to issue bonds. It also sets them up for even more massive cuts next year if the legislature does not increase school funding, because there will be no cushion.

Second, this is incredibly hypocritical, because Corbett is argueing that schools should empty their piggy banks, while he doesn't want the State to spend the $800 MILLION that the State received in additional revenue beyond what Corbett had forecast a few months ago. He wants to save that money for a "rainy day." Hey, Tommy, its pouring down here.

This year, even the richest suburban school districts are eliminating scores of teaching positions.

School districts are also humstrung by a new state law that makes it even harder for them to raise property taxes.

School districts are going through their budgets line item by line item to list the expenses that are required by the state, and those that are not. That is why arts and music programs experienced such severe cuts this year. This year, there are school districts that are proposing to eliminate ALL kindergraden, because it is not required.

PA. forces tons of unfunded mandates upon the public schools, many of which are not required for publicly-funded charter schools. Those mandates leave school districts with very few good choices to reduce costs.

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http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=386769

"School officials in Harrisburg, York and Woodland Hills in suburban Pittsburgh have even raised the idea of getting rid of kindergarten entirely. All districts currently offer at least half-day kindergarten.

Eliminating kindergarten, said Jim Buckheit of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, is a desperate act for school districts because of the widely acknowledged value of early childhood education to a child's success later in life.

"Most educators would rather get rid of high school before they got rid of kindergarten, but we're mandated to have high school," Buckheit said."

[JPZenger]

2. Reading School District to eliminate 170 teachers this year

http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=386694

[MadrasT]

3. This is so upsetting.

Some friends of mine here in PA lost their teaching jobs a year ago and are *still* looking for new jobs.

It is awful for the kids and it is awful for all the people who will lose their jobs.

Grrrrr.

Thanks for posting all these links.