Bleak outlook for GCS

Last night's School Board meeting could've easily been an on-air promo for the area's private schools.

Folks, things are bad downtown at GCS, and we'd better wake up and smell reality...and it stinks. (complete coverage via N&R)

My thoughts on GCS Supt. Mo Green's half-a-billion dollar budget:

1. Massive layoffs are on the way. The number is over 100. N&R points to 108. Library assistants, technology teachers, testing coordinators, ESL teachers are on the chopping block. That number may increase when area principals complete their budgets in the coming days.

Board member Darlene Garrett:

Board member Darlene Garrett said she is worried that cutting technology teachers who help prepare eighth-grade students for a state-required computer test will result in more students failing the test. Green is proposing cutting the teaching positions from 14 to five.

“This is a hard test, a really hard test. How are we going to do it with only five (teachers)?” Garrett said. “I just don’t see how it’s going to happen.”

And let me say this...with the pending layoffs, I appreciate Board member Paul Daniels' sentiments (and Garth Hebert) that this conversation cannot be conducted in secret. We're not dealing with numbers on a piece of paper...we're dealing with lives. Family members who bring home a paycheck. Let's remember that, GCS.

2. Regional reorganization...regional superintendents were named yesterday, although I don't think now is the right time to be planning a major effort such as this. I support the reorganization effort in theory, but when you're talking about firing teachers but hiring big-salary administrators, I have a massive problem with that. Now is not the time to be doing this.

3. SROs on the chopping block...Let's be real: Board member Amos Quick has always had a problem with school resource officers in our middle and high schools and wants to explore how much money will be saved if they disappear. So it is no surprise that he may be using this pullback in the economy to attempt to pull our SROs out of the schools, an idea once described by Guilford County Sheriff B.J. Barnes as "dead on arrival."

N&R:

Board member Amos Quick suggested reviewing how much the system pays for police officers on school campuses.

“We have to, in my opinion, to look at that as a viable option,” Quick said. He praised the work of the officers but noted they are not required by law.

4. Increasing class sizes, raising prices on school lunches, tacking on new fees for ACES are all in play.

What's asinine is that this budget is based on Gov. Perdue's budget, which is currently being sliced and diced in the General Assembly. The State Senate wants to cut even more.

We'd better watch this budget process very very carefully. Trickery is in play and our kids will be the ones to get hurt.

E.C. :)