We Are All Serfs Now

Just when it seemed that Wisconsin workers were close to victory,  with momentum clearly on the side of unions, especially after Michael Moore’s amazing speech, the Republican legislature rammed through a bill to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights using some type of parliamentary maneuver according to the Huffington Post.

A massive recall effort is already underway to recall Governor Scott Walker and all of the Republicans who voted without Democrats present.

WISCONSIN RECALL BID PICKS UP SUPPORT

Meanwhile, closer to home, RIFs will not go out until tomorrow, prolonging the agony and most of those RIF’d will be permanent teachers with between 3 and 10 years of experience.  How convenient.  You leave the most veteran who will retire within 10 years and the youngsters, 50% of whom will leave within five years.

We just found out at my small Options school that we will lose our great ROP teacher and her position too.  She called her ROP principal and was told, “You’re out.”  But she may still work at another school but everything is up in the air.  This means that our school, which serves the very highest needs kids in the district will be down to two teachers running the CDS school- we are also (possibly) losing the AP.

So our principal-=  who overseas the continuation school- is understandably distressed and the staff is brainstorming ways to raise money. I start grant writing Sunday night.   By then, I should know if I have been RIF’d.  I’m on the edge with my start date being 3/31/03.  Of course then there is also the matter of the new schools at Central and Gage which we will discover whether they have been approved March 15th- D-Day for RIF’s.   If I do manage to survive the RIF’s and go to the new school,  I will be looking at about 80 dollars a week in gas for my Ford Focus to drive from Tujunga to South Los Angeles if gas stays at 4 dollars a gallon.

If I stay at my CDS school, I can look forward to trying to run the school with my colleague, who is likely to get RIF’d -and trying to teach all electives and academic classes with no support from the district.  We will have to take on some administrative duties, yard duty, tech support and coming up  with creative electives. So I am writing two grants- one for the Central and Gage schools and one for the  CDS.  We hope we can hold onto Shane, who teaches art once a week.

UPDATE: 3/10/11  I survived. My principal informed me I was not on the list, but my wonderful, supportive colleague is.  He is not that disappointed because he wants to pursue his doctorate but I urged him to add on a special ed credential.  I hope he will for his future.  CDS is challenging and I would not have made it here without his support.   This country is basically going down the drain when we don’t feel we need to educate our young and then we can bash the human resource – teachers- that we need the most.

I wonder how all of those Wisconsonites feel who voted for Scott Walker to send a message and ended up losing, because Republicans are union members, too.   Or those who voted for him because after all,  “I don’t have benefits and 3 months off a year, so why should you!”  In other words, the race to the bottom mentality- why should you have something if I don’t.

The Wisconsin bill will make sure teachers and other public workers cannot get raises above the “rate of inflation.”  I wonder if CEO’s have to stick to that rule.  We are all serfs now.