To all of you education majors reading this, here’s a little advice: with the way things are going lately, you might want to look into another line of work, or leave the state after you graduate.
After all those classes you’ve been taking and all those hours of student teaching, you might not be able to find a job in Mississippi.
This is all because Mississippi’s state budget has been cut back.
A plan backed by both the Mississippi Senate and Gov. Haley Barbour will leave schools $161 million short.
Not only will new teachers not be hired, but many of the old ones are being told that they will be released at the end of the school year.
In many schools statewide, the first teachers to go are those with little experience. This means most first-year teachers suddenly don’t have jobs or hopes of finding another.
These pink slips are leaving many schools shorthanded. These teachers were hired because schools needed their expertise in a particular subject area, as well as a high ratio of students to teachers. If teachers are let go, who is going to teach the subjects they taught? Are the remaining teachers going to take on their students?
If that’s the plan, it needs to be re-thought.
A teacher can only effectively control, discipline and teach so many students at once. If too many students are packed into a classroom, the children will soon have severe discipline problems and proceed to the next grade unprepared.
Mississippi is definitely not No. 1 in education. We can’t let the quality of education suffer if we want to produce intelligent, educated and productive citizens.
Unfortunately, because of the way the system works, these mass layoffs are letting some of Mississippi’s best teachers slip through the cracks.
Lack of experience is the biggest determining factor in who is let go and who is kept on staff. Often, teachers who have been on the job for a long time are burned out and without passion for their work. They are not as effective at what they do as they used to be.
Yet they are allowed to keep their jobs, while those with lots to give and a passion for giving it are left with a useless degree.
I am not proposing that we fire all of the old teachers. There are plenty of wonderful teachers who have been teaching for a long time.
I am merely saying that there needs to be different guidelines if the state Legislature is so set on laying off teachers.
This budget cut will also be detrimental to those teachers who are allowed to keep their jobs. The lack of funds will require that teachers provide, with money out of their own pocket, classroom supplies. Some of these supplies are as basic as chalk for the chalkboard, or markers for the marker-board today.
Of course school supplies don’t stop there. Any extra education tools that are enriching or and more expensive will be left for the teacher to buy as well.
That means that these supplies and teaching aides will probably not be purchased since teachers have to buy groceries first.
A budget cut is detrimental to any organization or cause, and requires adjustments to be made accordingly. Obviously, when there is a lack of money, something must suffer.
But in this case, education should not be the thing to suffer.
Students who receive their education and now want to educate their children should not be punished with lack of jobs, pink slips, oversized classes, low pay and inadequately-supplied classrooms.
The Mississippi government needs to realize that the education of our youth is imperative for our country. It is not expendable in their number-cruching.
Shaina Hanson is a freshman political science major. She can be reached at [email protected].