Pink's on Us

(thanks to careerhubblog.com for the image!)

Green is always good news, it seems. When stocks are up, it’s green. Money is always deliciously green…at least, in the USA. Veggies, which are good for you, are green. Going green saves our Earth. Green lets you pass the intersection. Green means “CORRECT”. Green saves you from getting pinched to death. And all except for the green-eyed monster, of course :P.

Why, WHY do they have to let teachers suffer though? Schools all across California (and across the entire nation, probably) are having teachers laid off. Evil conniving pink slips. All because of budget cuts. Just so those government folks know--without education, there wouldn’t be a federal government.

They don’t even care about whether the teacher(s) are good or bad. They hand out pink slips as if they were free flyers. Only, it’s mandatory. “Take one…TAKE ONE, and DEAL with it!!” I’m sure schools don’t want to do this, and I understand that. They have no other choice. But there should be some other ways to manage the budget cuts and not have to make thousands of teachers jobless.

It just so happens that teaching is one of the lowest-paying jobs there are. If only they were paid a bit more, they could come up with a strategy like this one. Lowering the higher paid employee’s salaries so that it’s possible to keep from laying off as many employees as possible. It doesn’t hurt to have a CEO has great as that guy, either. If only all CEOs could be Caring Empathetic Officers.

In addition to teachers being cut, many classes and extracurricular activities are also being eliminated. Honors and AP classes may not be able to hold up, and schools are threatening to cut them completely unless the classes have 36 or more students enrolled (which is a very packed class as is). Students approaching high school in the near future will not be able to have their education to the fullest, and that’s terrible. Soon, they won’t be able to participate in an activity that they may really want to do. Also, teachers who only have one credential in a certain subject are at a very high risk of losing their jobs completely. What have we come to?!

*Pink Slip Friday* Show your support.

Oh, and put your money where your mouth is. :$

-the clam.

Give Me A[nother] Break

[credit is given on image]

The world must be ending. Who knew gas prices would prance another day in $1 land?

Who knew the stock market liked to play snakes and ladders?

Who knew the people who gave us education would be laid off by the thousands?

And, who knew there were three weeks in a winter break? At least, that’s the case in California. Trust me, if the government is willing to add another week to students’ holiday vacations (we all know they just want to torture us), it means the sky is falling...well, maybe Arnold’s sky.

In fact, three-week winter vacation has already been in effect. In just this past holiday, the Los Angeles Unified School District had their schools award their students with another week of caroling and partying. But you know what’s even worse? They’ve recently reached an agreement to lay off thousands of teachers in the district. You’ve gotta feel some sympathy for the folks. No profession works harder to give us all an education—and no profession are paid less for what they are obliged to do. If you think of their situation, it gets even miserable. Just think about it—if a teacher is laid off in a district, do you think they could get another job in the same district? The district had just laid off a bunch of teachers...do you think they would hire the same person they just laid off? Yes. That means the teacher has to find a job in a more faraway county (NOT country...if that day comes, we might as well eat dirt), and if it comes to the worse, they would have to move to another place just to work in another district.

"We are the creators of our own destruction."

–(Sorry, sounds familiar, but I don’t know who to credit)

Yes, yes we are. Ancient Rome killed itself, one way or another, because of their ignorance. Humankind is trashing the Earth even as I speak, even though we know we’re goners if we don’t protect it. We’re still spending our money on wars and foreign oil, investors are still investing in all the wrong stuff, and banks are as chaotic as Katy Perry’s songs.

Life is filled with way too much irony.

-the clam.