There You Go Again…

Scott Walkers campaign committee is out with a new ad hoping that the third time will be the charm. Like Casey at Bat, the swing and missed grandly their first two attempts. They started with a huge swing and miss by a new school board member who had problems counting and was ethically challenged.

“Strike one!” the umpire said.

They followed that up with perpetual victim Kristi Lacroix, who is so adamant she wants her privacy back that she cant get on enough right wing hate radio shows to tell everyone.

and the umpire said “Strike two!”

“Fraud!” cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered “Fraud!”
But one scornful look from Casey Walkerand the audience was awed.
They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Casey Walker wouldn’t let that ball go by again.

The sneer has fled from Casey’s Walker’s lip, the teeth are clenched in hate;
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey’s Walker’s blow.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville Kochville — mighty Casey Walker has struck out.

It seems the third attempt at covering up Scott Walker’s Draconian Cuts to education. The latest installment involves Jeff Knutson, a fourth grade teacher from Cottage Grove elementary school.

Lets take a look at what Mr. Knutson has to say.

“When the State Budget passed in Madison alot of us thought we might lose our jobs.”

Well Mr. Knutson, according to a recently released DPI and WASDA study, many of your colleagues have lost their jobs!

The report shows that in or out of contract, most districts cut positions and that, in fact, districts without contracts saw higher student-teacher ratios as well as a faster increase in the student-teacher ratios. In other words, the districts with the greatest flexibility to use Walker’s “tools” were the districts with the largest and fastest-growing class sizes.

That’s the three-year trend for job losses in Wisconsin schools. Combined with predictions from districts that next year’s cuts will be as deep or deeper, we’re looking at 10,000 jobs lost in public education between 2009 and 2013. That’s just devastating.

Unless of course you do not care about your colleagues throughout the state and only care about the ones in your own Monona Grove School District, then you would be correct. The reason that we were able to minimize the jobs losses was due to President Obama\'s stimulus funds! Maybe you would like to thank our president also!

” We figured if we didn’t get laid off, our class sizes would become unmanageable, but that didn’t happen.”

Ok now Mr. Knutson is digging himself a hole. This statement is not only flat out false throughout the state it is an outright lie in his own district. Total of 32 classes exceed class size guides in MGSD. The headline speaks for itself, so we can assume Mr. Knutson does NOT read the paper or is purposefully misleading. We can also look at the Study done by School Employees United \"The Developing Crisis in Our Schools\".

Almost four thousand educators from almost fifty southeast Wisconsin school districts participated in this survey
during the month of October, one month into the school year. Almost all of the districts’ employees no longer
have full collective bargaining rights. The survey results paint a disturbing picture of what is already happening in
area districts. Among the results:
• 43.5% of respondents say class sizes are increasing
• 78.2% of respondents disagree with the statement that the schools are the same or better off than last
year
• 75.8% of respondents say their school district has fewer resources this year to meet the needs of all
children as individuals
• 57% of respondents have recently considered leaving their profession
• 71.5% of respondents would not recommend a career in education to a friend or college student
These results are especially disturbing given widespread agreement among district administrators that next year’s
funding shortage will be significantly worse than this year. The districts in the survey combined had over $13
million in federal Education Jobs Fund money available that will not be available next year.

Speaking of money not available next year, it looks like the Monona Grove School District will have to cut ANOTHER $2,000,000 from our budget next year. In case your wondering what that equates to, board member Peter Sobol breaks it down:

To give you an idea $1.5M is the equivalent of more than 25 full time teachers.

Which 25 of your colleagues can we get rid of? How many more classes need to exceed the class size guidelines before classes are so big they are unmanageable?

..we have in hand a stark example of how class size can make a difference. The high school AP Calculus class, with 34 students, is 2.5 weeks behind the point in the curriculum that last year’s smaller classes were.

who needs calculus anyway right?

The point is, what the Walker Administration is doing to education, is absolutely NOT working, because it was never meant to.

It is too bad that Mr. Knutson put a misinformed political ideology over the well being of our children’s education.

PS: The fact that Governor Walker has such a hard time with honesty, shows exactly why he needs to be recalled!