Schwarzenegger proposes 5 fewer school days (CA)
Faced with a massive budget deficit, the governor wants to stop state funding for a week of classes. Educators criticize the plan as most harmful to poor students.
By Seema Mehta (LA Times)
A proposal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to shorten the school year by five days is creating panic among educators across California, who say they barely have enough time to fit the state’s academic standards into the existing 180-day calendar.
The idea to cut funding equivalent to five school days would save $1.1 billion at a time when California faces a massive budget deficit. But state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell called the proposal “devastating.”
EK on 14 Jan 2009 at 4:25 pm #
Okay Ken, you got me…I’ll bite, and comment. It’s not like I don’t ALWAYS have an opinion anyway
First and foremost: Schwarzenegger likes to f**k with people. He tosses out these drastic proposals i.e. privatizing gov’t employee pensions (ah hem) or reducing salaries to minimum wage, and then he sits back to watch all the pols, activists, and common folk get riled up… they make things happen; he ends up doing nothing. The threats remain on the table until somehow there’s no longer the need to act on his drastic proposal. Yeah, ok Arnie. Repub or not, lest not forget that this dude is one of the most liberal. He’s so far in the middle that he can’t possibly believe in some of the crap he spews! It’s all a tool.
C-o-n…spiracy.
#2- While I don’t believe this will come to pass (I think the concept alone is red herring: in order to get action in other areas, to ease the budget crisis), less time in school isn’t beneficial to anyone and everyone knows it. Kids in this country, on average, already have less time in school than do kids in other developed and less-developed nations, i.e. Japan, etc. It isn’t hard to figure out why they surpassed the US a long time ago in innovation alone. Our Intellectual Capital is in the red. CA is one of the largest economies in the world, so this speaks volume: it’s really a national issue. This sure as hell isn’t the way to get our shine back. I just hope I’m not wrong about it being b.s.