Tough sell
By chance, an article about school budget cuts appeared in Tuesday’s paper beside an advertisement for the Teaching Fellows Scholarship Program. With all the talk of school budget cuts, aspiring students might be scared away from entering the field.
They shouldn’t. The state will always need more bright, energetic teachers.
Besides, the classroom cuts are not as bad as they sound. The Rowan-Salisbury School System expects to have 1,013 classroom teachers this fall. That’s just 26 fewer than last year, and most of the decline is due to enrollment. Projected enrollment is 20,779, down 124 students from the previous school year ó largely due to a new kindergarten cutoff.
Mind you, those are just the classroom teachers. Other certified staff and employees are not included in those figures.
Still, show us a private industry with 1,000 workers that has lost only 26 positions in the past year, and we’ll show you a thriving business. Government budget cuts are painful, but the private sector has gone through far deeper cutbacks ó and learned to live with them.