Billion Dollar Bake Sale Planned in Protest Against Budget Cuts in Public Education
Quartz Hill, California Teachers Protesting
The plan is to demonstrate before the school day begins to bring public attention to the budget cut.
According to the woman baking the bake salecupcakes, a parent of two Quartz Hill Elementary students and a classroom aide, the cupcakes at the fake bake sale will be real. They will be 12 inches high so as to be visible to the news cameras of the press, who have been notified of the event.
An administrator at Quartz Hill Elementary made it clear that the protest is being organized by the teachers and not by the administrators, however, there has been no move on the part of the school administration or the school district administration to deter the teachers from making their voices heard.
The same administrator explained the budget measures that are being protested.
Roughly one billion dollars are being cut from California state school budgets which will directly and indirectly cause many teachers to lose their jobs.
Due to union rules and hierarchies in place, the cuts will affect those with least seniority first. Those with seniority may still be affected as they will be subject to re-assignment should their schools need to take the drastic actions - an outcome that seems inevitable to all involved.
According to this administrator, an assistant principle, it is possible that some principals could be sent back to the classroom to become teachers again, while the teachers lowest on the priority list will be "pink slipped". Teacher-aides and librarians who moved into permanent "certified" positions from prior "classified" positions like playground monitors or part-time secretaries may be sent back to their old duties.
The protest aims to draw attention to the proposed budget cuts by holding a fake bake sale to raise one billion dollars, matching the proposed cuts. The cupcakes will be real but will be rather expensive.
Published by Eric Martin
Eric Martin is an artist and writer. Look for more of his work in The Stone Hobo, the Antelope Valley Anthology, The Open Doors Poetry Zine, Failure of Theory, Euclid's Negatives and on stage. He is an owner... View profile
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1 Comments
Post a CommentSo glad to hear that something is done to send a message about the proposed cuts. In NJ we have a similar problem and the governor is proposing to cut our library programs and I wrote about it too.