If Republicans are intentionally trying to make enemies out of public employees then I would say job well done.
Yesterday a bill that would kill tenure for faculty members of community and state colleges passed a key legislative committee. The bill basically forces new hires and those who have not yet earned tenure to work under one year contracts.
This sounds familiar right? That’s because earlier this month the Florida Legislature passed a bill that ends tenure for teachers and places them on annual contracts.
Now I may not be the brightest tomato in the bushel but it seems to me that state Republicans, and a certain Governor of the state, are out to destroy education in Florida.
Gov. Scott, who would lose to Windermere’s town manager in an election at this point, wants to cut almost $5 billion from education and Florida Republicans want to cut almost $700 million in spending for public pension benefits for teachers.
At this point in the game does anybody else who voted for these cats have buyer’s remorse?
Honestly, if you have a child in the Florida educational system this has to scare you and if it doesn’t I have to question why.
Why are we not outraged by this? Why do we continue to sit on our hands while the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature rips the foundation out from under us?
I know this may sound cliché, old, and tired but citizens, the children really are our future. No matter what has happened in Whitney Houston’s personal life, and a lot HAS happened, those lyrics still ring true to this day.
One day when we’re all old and gray and we wonder what went wrong and where we went wrong and we can no longer thank God for the state of Mississippi’s educational, ahem, prowess, just think back to the year 2011. When a 1 ton elephant-sized Republican anchor was attached to the ankles of our education system we waited to late to act.
When your kid comes home and just talks your ear off about a certain teacher and you can just sense the difference in your child’s life because of that one teacher. Then the next time you hear about Mr. Jackson, he’s in a totally different school district because his contract wasn’t renewed and your child has to start all over again.
In 20 years when you’re sitting at home watching a Presidential debate and the candidate you have put your support behind cannot spell potato you’ll sit and wonder, where did it all go wrong?
At this point if you don’t know then, neither do I.
-JH
