That’s just a sampling of the language being used to describe Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett’s proposed budget, which will be unveiled tomorrow early afternoon.
Last year, Corbett cut almost $900 million from the state education budget, a decision that caused well-publicized pain for the Chester Upland School District. The unionized teachers of that district, which relies on state aid for 70 percent of its budget, made the decision to work without pay, until finally a judge ordered the state to fund the Chester schools through February 23.
The silver lining is that the Chester Upland fiasco shone a bright light on the way schools were getting funded in Pennsylvania. Sarah Ferguson, one of the district’s elementary school teachers, sat with Michelle Obama at the State of the Union earlier this month. Last week, Ferguson was a guest on the Ellen Degeneres Show, where she received a check for $100,000 for the Chester Upland School District from JC Penney.
But all of that exposure means nothing if Governor Corbett doesn’t restore any funding to struggling schools. And from all the signals he’s sending, it appears that Corbett will stay the course and continue his efforts to defund public education in Pennsylvania, while keeping the oil drillers and others from feeling any pain.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t a problem with one school district. Chester, where the median household income is about $26,000, was just the canary in the coal mine. Six other school districts will be in similarly dire straits within the year if the slashes remain. School districts in Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Allentown, Duquese, York City, Reading, and even the relatively wealthy Poconos are reported to have similar budget predicaments.
Corbett’s belt-tightening act may work wonders with the Tea Party crowd, but they have real, disastrous consequences for Pennsylvania’s future. 70 percent of all state school districts have increased class sizes, according the PSEA President Mike Crossey. All the programs that have been proven to raise student achievement: tutoring, art, music, full-day kindergarten, and after-school programs all “took the biggest hit” with last year’s budget.
The New York Times quoted Chester Upland’s acting deputy superintendent as saying: “Poor schools in this state are underfunded…Poor kids aren’t going to get the same shot as wealthy kids. That’s the society we are in now.”
One-time gifts from Ellen Degeneres and JC Penney are great, but they are not policy. Corbett seems to think that Pennsylvania can have a bright future with crowded classrooms, fewer teachers, fewer extracurricular programs, and the lightest possibly tax burden for oil drillers and the already-super-wealthy. But that’s just simply not the case. Corbett needs to reverse course with this new budget, before it’s too late.
It took a court order, but the Chester Upland School District in Pennsylvania has enough funding to last through February 23. The unionized teachers who committed to work without pay have been granted a brief reprieve. But as we wrote, this is far from sufficient; not only will that funding run out soon, but other Pennsylvania school districts may soon be facing similar financial catastrophe.
Governor Tom Corbett’s office made public a draft plan to address the crisis in Chester Upland, located in Delaware County. It calls for the state to take over both the Chester Upland and Duquense City districts and run them through a three-person oversight board, similar to the Philadelphia School Reform Commission. Like Michigan’s “Emergency Financial Managers,” this board would have the authority to cancel or alter union contracts.
While the draft takeover plan is “intended to be a starting point for discussions,” according to the state Education Department, it has already drawn heavy criticism.
First of all, the Chester Upland School District was already under state control from 1994 to 2010. A return to this kind of administration is hardly a long-term solution. “We’ve had 16 years of [state control] in Chester Upland and have very little to show for it, academically and financially,” remarked Wanda Mann, Chester Upland’s Republican school board president, adding that they have “a mountain of unpaid bills, among a host of other troublesome financial conditions that we inherited.”
She’s right to be frustrated. What good would it do the students of Chester Upland to go back to the policies of the last decade, when the financial management was no better than it is now?
Second, Corbett’s draft plan ignores the sole reason why Chester Upland and the other school districts are having this problem in the first place: last year’s budget, which slashed almost $900 million from Pennsylvania’s education spending.
Last year around June, we stood behind the podium on the House floor and we pleaded with the members on the other side and we pleaded with them, “Please, please do not support a budget that would cut the Chester Upland school budget in half…and even told them that if this happens that teachers would be laid off, programs would be cut, schools would be consolidated, children would be left behind. It fell on deaf ears. And we said that we would be at this point at this time, and here we are. Programs cut, educators gone, students walking around hopeless.
What on earth did Gov. Corbett and the Republican legislature think was going to happen? That they would get something for nothing? That they could balance the budget on the backs of students and teachers, while leaving the breaks for oil drillers and for-profit charter schools in place, and nothing would go wrong?
Last week, a federal judge ordered that the state of Pennsylvania release $3.2 million to fund the cash-strapped Chester Upland School District.
For the students, as well as the unionized teachers who worked for free for several weeks after the district ran out of money in early January, the trouble is far from over. That money will keep those schools running only until February 23, and the school board has sued the state for funding to take district through the end of the school year. Columnist Phil Heron rightly called it “a reprieve; not a pardon.”
It’s also increasingly clear that Chester Upland, which relies on state aid for 70 percent of its funding, might not be the last Pennsylvania school district to go bankrupt this year.
City Controller Alan Butkovitz told new schools chief Thomas Knudsen in a letter Wednesday that he would including a warning to bond-rating agencies in his annual independent audit report unless the district offers plans to close a massive projected budget deficit by the end of June.
“The Harrisburg School District, the York City School District, Allentown School District, the Reading School District and on the west coast there’s a district called Sto-Rox and another called Duquesne which are, if not totally out of money at this point, are on the verge of being totally out of money,” Gottlieb said. “Duquesne has been in straits for many, many years now.”
The problems stem from a decision made by Republican Governor Tom Corbett to slash nearly $900 million in state education funding last year. Despite the outcry for additional revenue, Corbett has been unwilling to take small steps to recoup funds; he has particularly stubborn in charging fees to oil drilling companies.
Corbett, responding to public pressure, finally joined legislative leaders on Monday to discuss the Chester Upland situation. After a 90 minutes conversation he told the press: “It will be up to everyone to work together to find an acceptable, long-term solution to this problem. A solution that will make sure this problem is not repeated in the future.”
Corbett unveils his next state budget in two weeks. He needs to make sure to give school districts enough funding to give students an education that prepares them for the future. What we’re seeing in Chester Upland and elsewhere is the result of a cut, slash, and defund policy that hurts kids, hurts teachers, and ultimately hurts the state.
In the Chester Upland School District in Pennsylvania, unionized teachers worked without pay for weeks after the district ran out of money. The district relies on state aid for 70 percent of its funding, and the $900 million in education cuts put in place by Republican Governor Tom Corbett have put teachers and students in an impossible position.
Yesterday, the Governor said he would release enough funds for the district to operate through June. While the immediate problem is resolved, this makes no assurances for next year; nor does it address similar situations that could soon be faced by schools in Reading, York, Duquesne City, or Harrisburg.
Luckily, this problem might get a big, bright light shone on it this evening at the State of the Union, where Chester Upland District math and literacy teacher Sarah Ferguson will attend as a guest of First Lady Michelle Obama.
Ferguson, who has taught in Chester for 21 years, had one of the more devastating quotes in the Philadelphia Inquirer piece that broke the news on the catastrophe in Chester:
Columbus Elementary School math and literacy teacher Sara Ferguson, who has taught in Chester Upland for 21 years, said after the meeting, “It’s alarming. It’s disturbing. But we are adults; we will make a way. The students don’t have any contingency plan. They need to be educated, so we intend to be on the job.”
Of the decision to invite Ms. Ferguson, the White House wrote that she is someone who “sees education as a vehicle of change in our society, and feels privileged to have touched the lives of so many students.”
What the invitation also says, implicitly, is: There are real, tangible, and dire consequences of politically-driven decisions to oppose funding for states to pay teachers and public safety workers.
The education catastrophe in the Chester Upland School District is a result of two policy shifts.
First is the budget-slashing bonanza that has been a hallmark of freshman Republican governors from Ohio to Florida.
State budget details aren’t the most exciting things to talk about, but they show the priorities of those in power. When Governor Corbett can’t cough up money to pay educators to teach low-income students, but can shield oil drillers from paying for impact they have on Pennsylvania communities, that shows his priorities.
The second shift is the desire at the federal level to oppose any and all attempts to alleviate unemployment and the public layoffs at the state level. When President Obama proposed the American Jobs Act, Senate Republicans blocked a chance to debate it. When Democrats attempted to pass the sections of the bill separately, including the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act, Senate Republicans once again filibustered even debating the bill, even though CNN found 75 percent of Americans in favor of the provision.
It’s obvious and natural that many Republican politicians don’t want President Obama to be reelected. It’s just a question of priorities: is one political victory more important than thousands of children getting an education? Is protecting the Pennsylvania oil drillinng industry, which happens to include many of his campaign donors, more important to Governor Corbett than adequately funding Pennsylvania schools?
Working America members are asking these questions. Hopefully after the State of the Union, the rest of the country will be asking them too.
Two days ago, the Chester Upland School District in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, ran out of money.
Despite this fact, the schools are still functioning. Children in the predominantly African-American school district are still attending classes every day, as if nothing is different.
But something is very different. The teachers are now working for free.
While you digest that, here are some other things to know about the Chester Upland School District. The median household income in Chester, PA is $23,703, less than half the national average. With such an economically disadvantaged tax base, the school district relies on state aid for about 70 percent of its total funding.
When freshman Republican Governor Tom Corbett signed his budget last summer, he cut $900 million from Pennsylvania’s statewide education funding. Yet it was the Chester Upland school board that received a letter from the state Education Secretary in December saying, according to the Philadelphia Enquirer, that “the board had failed to properly manage its finances and would not get any additional funds.”
So at a union meeting on Tuesday, the employees resolved that despite recent developments, they would stay on teaching without pay “as long as [they] are individually able.”
Chester Upland was forced to lay off “40 percent of its professional staff and about half of its unionized support staff before school began last fall.” That leaves 200 professionals and 65 support staff to manage a school with class sizes of over 40 students.
Chester Upland is not the only district desperately trying to stay afloat. Corbett’s cuts forced one school district to enforce wage freezes and cut extracurricular activities and another turned to actually using sheep instead of lawnmowers to cut grass at two of its schools. As ThinkProgress’s Travis Waldron pointed out, Corbett could relieve school districts if he let special interest groups like tobacco and the oil and gas industry go without their tax breaks. But he seems to prefer allowing teachers to go without pay.
Budgets aren’t just numbers on a piece of paper. They show the priorities of those in power. The priorities of the Corbett Administration, it would appear, include enriching the wealthy donors and industries that supported his 2010 campaign, but not the education of Pennsylvania’s children.
For instance, a woman in Florida who donated $180,000 to Corbett’s campaign is married to the CEO of a Marcellus Shale drilling firm. The legislature is currently debating how much Marcellus Shale drillers should pay for the affect their activities are having on Pennsylvania’s environment, communities, and local infrastructure. Corbett, not so coincidentally, has been very reluctant to levy fees on the drillers, despite the desperate need for revenue.
I guess it’s a damn shame that neither the children of Chester, Pennsylvania, many of whom come from households below the poverty line, nor the teachers of the Chester Upland School District who are currently making zero dollars for educating those children, can afford to make massive contributions to Tom Corbett’s reelection campaign. It’s a damn shame because perhaps Corbett would be more reluctant to gut Pennsylvania schools and more willing to charge enormous, wealthy energy companies what they owe.
But this isn’t just a story about Corbett. It’s a story about the brave men and women of the Chester Upland School District who are doing what many of us would not be willing to do: go into work every day without the promise of a paycheck, for the simple reason that the students need them. More than anything, it’s a reminder to thank a teacher.
Rick Perry is still Governor of Texas. Rick Perry is still running for President of the United States. He is still making money as the author of the bestselling book Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America From Washington, which decries the role of government in our lives.
And yet, Rick Perry is retired. According to the Texas Tribune, Governor Perry officially retired in January so he could start collecting pension benefits.
Perry makes a $150,000 annual gross salary as Texas governor. Now, thanks to his early retirement, Perry, 61, gets a monthly retirement annuity of $7,698 before taxes, or $6,588 net. That raises his gross annual salary to more than $240,000.
Not only is he getting a bump in his take-home pay now, but he can expect another one when he leaves the governor’s office. Perry is in two public pension systems: the “employee class” and the “elected class.” He only retired from the former.
While public workers see their pensions slashed across the country, small government champion Rick Perry gets to retire not once, but twice with pension benefits courtesy of Texas taxpayers.
Most people who spent their careers railing against government spending would think twice before simultaneously drawing salary and pension from the public dole.
But this is Rick Perry, a politician who has always exceled in manipulating public institutions for personal gain.
As Governor, Perry has made little effort to hide the way he rewards his wealthy campaign donors with government contracts. Matt Taibbi, the formerly Moscow-based journalist who did a feature about Perry for Rolling Stone in October, even compared Perry’s Texas to a Soviet protectorate. With a confusing track record that swings back and forth between open hostility with the federal government (suggesting that Texas secede from the United States) and what some would call government intrusion (mandating HPV vaccines), all of Perry’s actions can be explained by who was giving him money at the time, and what business they were in. Perry’s chief of staff, for instance, got a lucrative lobbying job for the pharmaceutical giant Merck right before the HPV vaccination order provided Merck a windfall of public money.
Is your stomach flipping? It should be. This is exactly the kind of cronyism, nepotism, and back-door dealing that makes the other 99 percent of us sick.
But now that Perry is so openly cashing in on Texans’ tax dollars, why not play the game with him?
Here’s how it will go, Rick. You’re bringing home an annual $240,000 worth of hard-earned taxpayer cash, so it’s time to do us a few favors:
Raise the Texas minimum wage –The so-called economic “Texas miracle” was built on extremely low-wage jobs. Let’s raise the state minimum wage above $7.25 per hour and put some real spending power in the pockets of working families who need it most.
Rebuild crumbling infrastructure – In his piece, Taibbi details how Perry granted a huge contract to a big donor for a nuclear waste depository. Now that it’s our dollars in Perry’s pockets, it’s time for him to use some lucrative bridge and road repair funds to put thousands of unemployed Texas construction workers and engineers back to work.
Get teachers back in the classroom and rescue Texas education – The Texas education system is in trouble. By 2040, 30 percent of Texas workers don’t have a high school diploma. You turn these trends around by getting laid off teachers back in the classroom now.
We the taxpayers don’t usually demand much. But with Perry taking home such a big check from us while talking trash about public employees, I think doing us a few solids is the least he could do.
Today at noon, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate announced the latest totals for the effort to recall Governor Scott Walker and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch. Only 30 days after the effort formally kicked off, 507,533 signatures have been collected to trigger a recall election.
Quick review of the numbers: Under Wisconsin law, organizers need signatures equaling 25 percent of those who voted for governor in 2010. In this case, that’s 540,258. They have 60 days to gather this many signatures, which puts the deadline at January 17, 2012. The Government Accountability Board (GAB), which oversees elections in the state, then determines a date for the recall election.
Just like the summer recalls and the Ohio referendum, the GAB has to determine if enough of the signatures are valid. With this expectation, organizers from United Wisconsin have 720,000 as a rough signature goal by the January deadline. By comparison, the intrepid Buckeyes in next door Ohio gathered 1.3 million signatures to repeal Senate Bill 5, which was about six times the needed amount.
Here are some more highlights from Mike Tate’s presser:
Over 25,000 Wisconsinites have volunteered in the recall effort.
42 recall field offices have been set up throughout the state.
People aren’t just giving their time, they are giving their money: 27,000 donors have given an average of $27 toward the recall effort.
The recall petitions have gone viral: 37,000 people have downloaded recall petitions from the Wisconsin Democratic Party website.
Needless to say, Walker and his friends are spooked. You know how you can tell? The Fox News Channel is rushing to his aid, doing what they do best – straight up lying:
Fox News reporter Eric Shawn told viewers on Thursday that signatures from “Mickey Mouse” and “Adolf Hitler” were “allegedly on petitions in Wisconsin in the recall for Governor Scott Walker.” Fun little story with the potential to go viral? Absolutely. True? Not so much.
In fact, the original story that Shawn evidently built his report off of is about a strictly hypothetical situation discussed by members of the Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board who were asked what would happen if someone signed the petition as Mickey Mouse. There’s been no actual allegation that anyone actually signed the petition against Walker that way.
Notice the message. The point isn’t to dispute the number, because they can’t. The point of the story is to make viewers doubt the process in its entirety.
Again, no one should be looking at Wisconsin 2012 expecting a clean fight. As we’ve written, Walker and the Koch Brothers are going to drag this as far into the gutter as possible, because they know the Governor can’t run on any accomplishments. This election, once triggered, will be about dirty tricks, personal attacks, culture warrior tactics, and instilling distrust of the democratic process underway. The Fox salvo is a perfect example. So is this. And this.
What choice do Walker and his corporate friends have? Half a million Badgers want to oust him from his spot in Madison, and they aren’t messing around.
Gov. Scott Walker’s attack on working families may have divided Wisconsin and polarized the two sides, but it also motivated us to not only speak out, but to take action. Working America members feel pretty strongly about what Walker is doing to our state, and most of our members agree that the Governor is hurting working families.
Our members from all stages of life, have been putting in the effort to recall Governor Walker. Lois from Oshkosh is a retiree whose family members are now struggling to make ends meet because of his cuts. Lois is not only collecting signatures in her free time, but also regularly calls the local recall office to asking what food and supplies are needed.
Scott from Bay View is a contractor who has been out of work for about a year. He is using his free time to collect signatures and has personally collected more than four hundred. Julia from Milwaukee owns a local daycare center; she has noticed a drop in attendance since Walker took office as parents lose their jobs or state assistance for child care. Julia has been circulating petitions amongst the parents at her daycare to help with the recall effort.
Ron from Milwaukee, also retired has also been collecting signatures in his spare time. He told us that despite living on a limited income, “I’m down to eating peanut butter sandwiches right now, but I want to get this guy out and that’s more important than me going out to some restaurant for a fancy dinner.” Ron understands that the recall is about more than just collective bargaining rights; he thinks that access to education and health care are top issues, and Walker’s treatment of teachers, cuts to education, and restrictions on BadgerCare don’t sit well with him.
Mary from Racine displays the kind of selflessness and generosity Wisconsin is known for; she is living on disability payments to make ends meet, but does what she can to give back to the community. Mary regularly donates clothing and food to those in need, she had this question for politicians like Scott Walker, “if I can give back while my Medicare gets cut then why can’t the wealthiest 1 percent share in the sacrifice as well?” She has been helping in whatever way she can with the recall to show Scott Walker that all people, regardless of wealth, matter to Wisconsin communities.
Political hands on both sides concede that removing Governor Walker is a tall order. Even before an election is scheduled, organizers must gather over 540,000 signatures before January 17, and the Wisconsin winter doesn’t make the collection process any easier. Walker and his wealthy allies are already bombarding the airwaves with pro-Walker TV ads. But this recall effort has been held together by the optimism of those who are out there pounding the pavement for signatures, donating to their local recall offices, and the thousands of citizens who are signing the petition. The tenacious recall volunteers have already proved their dedication and effectiveness, collecting 300,000 signatures in just 12 days.
Clearly, the people of this state believe that by working together we can help move Wisconsin Forward again.
1.) While campaigning, make sure to promise to take action on the most pressing issue on the minds of Americans: jobs. Declare unequivocally and repeatedly that you will create 700,000 jobs in 7 years, and make “Let’s get to work” your campaign slogan. That way, voters can feel a sense of betrayal and disappointment when you do nothing to follow through.
2.) Start breaking promises right off the bat – voters love initiative! Despite a historic high level of unemployment in construction, reject federal money for a high speed rail project that would employ thousands of construction workers and engineers. Don’t give a good reason for your actions. That way, voters can assume you’re killing jobs for political reasons.
3.) Has your state experienced a huge economic hit because of a man-made, preventable disaster recently, perhaps an oil spill? By all means, do not make any effort to hold the corporations behind that disaster accountable. Even if other governors of your own party are making such an effort, continue to have more sympathy for those corporations then your constituents.
4.) One of the keys to being an unpopular governor is to demonize huge segments of your state’s population, and then watch it backfire. Here’s a good list to start from:
12.) At all times, lack compassion and understanding about the basic needs and priorities of your state. The majority of your constituents just want to find a decent job, put food on the table, afford health care when they get sick, pay bills on time, vote on Election Day, and make sure their children get an adequate education. Your job is to wake up every morning in your mansion, drive to work, and make sure all those things are as difficult as possible.
Got more to add to Rick Scott’s Guide to Popularity? Leave your suggestions in the comments, or tweet at us with the hashtag #RickScottFail.
Florida’s Rick Scott has retaken the title of least popular governor in the country among the 36 on which PPP has polled this year. His job performance mark has tanked from 36% approving and 52% disapproving when PPP last polled the state in September to 26-58 now, a decline of 16 points on the margin. His greatest fall has been with his own party, which stands at 46-31, down 22 points. Independents disapprove by a 30-55 margin.
More key numbers:
66 percent of those who identify as political “moderates” disapprove of Scott. 34 percent of those who identify as “somewhat conservative” also disapprove.
55 percent of Independents disapprove, and so do 31 percent of Republicans.
African-Americans, a sizable population in Florida, have truly soured on Rick Scott – only 5 percent approve versus 80 percent disapproving. 66 percent of Hispanics also disapprove.
In a hypothetical rematch with 2010 Democratic opponent Alex Sink, Scott would only receive 37 percent of the vote. Sink would net 48 percent of the crucial Independent vote, and 21 percent of Republicanswould cross party lines instead of voting for Scott.
This level of poor job performance is even more impressive when you consider Scott’s competition:
Michigan’s Gov. Rick Snyder, who despite calling himself in favor of “small government” is wresting away local the power of local governments in his state;
Maine’s Gov. Paul LePage, who indicated he would punish certain cities for not agreeing with him politically;
So how did Scott do it? How did he manage to get nearly 3 out of every 4 Floridians to think he is bad at his job? We’ve prepared a little cheat sheet, in case you want to be a terrible governor at home. Stay tuned for Rick Scott’s Guide to Unpopularity!
