As someone who has no real tangible thoughts about or comprehension of budgets and projections in terms of a school district; the only experience I have with budgets is trying to divvy up my paycheck to procure me as much coffee as possible, reading about SCUSD going broke and having a rejected budget leaves me dumbfounded.
The articles by The Sacramento Bee, Superintendent Jorge Aguilar’s letter, and even the district-released video on YouTube all about the district “going broke,” seem to be written (or spoken) in some kind of code. A code specifically formed to not let students in on what’s happening.
Each media release seems to tiptoe around the real problem, the video on YouTube is four minutes long—four minutes of Superintendent Aguilar and Board President Jessie Ryan talking and talking, but somehow not saying anything.
The video description states, “Superintendent Aguilar and Board President Jessie Ryan warned that these cuts will not be enough to entirely address the district’s structural budget deficit. Both leaders called on district employees to rise to the occasion and make shared sacrifices to eliminate the structural budget deficit.”
The fact that the district thinks it’s a logical and just plan to stop searching for other flaws in the budget, and instead turn to the backbone of the district, our hardworking teachers that care about us, is almost despicable.
By strongly encouraging teachers to “rise to the occasion and make shared sacrifices” is a major ploy to the teachers’ consciousnesses just so the district can dig themselves out of the hole they made in the first place. How dare they turn on the teachers, knowing that, for the most part, of course, they would take these pay cuts for the kids. It’s their jobs as educators to be there for students, to educate a new generation. And for some teachers, it’s their calling, what they feel to be their purpose in life, and the fact that the district wants to manipulate this for their own gain is disgusting.
Saying there’s going to be “shared sacrifices” implies that not only teachers will be taking pay cuts, but other administrators, and district officials as well. But this directly goes against what Superintendent Aguilar declared later on in the video inbetween his vagueness.
It’s funny, my whole life I’ve attended schools in the Sac City Unified School District, and I’ve always been instructed to write specifics, never to use generalizations or vagueness unless absolutely necessary. I was taught that vagueness in writing was a sign of weakness, that nonfictional written works should be concise and to the point. And yet, in a time of great importance—the district couldn’t be vaguer.
By being vague, presumably, the district hoped to pull in attention, perhaps for a dramatic effect, or maybe even a sympathy grab at the citizens of Sacramento. But all they achieved is building a foundation for wild accusations and assumptions to form.
It almost goes unsaid that it seems like the district’s budget isn’t focused on going back to the “classroom.” Just by walking around McClatchy’s halls you could easily see the need for more resources, whether its paper, tissue, or other supplies, we probably need it. So is it wild to say that district officials and administrators are pocketing the majority of the budget and leaving the schools and people doing the real work, the teachers, high and dry?
This vagueness, vagueness about where the money has gone, why the budget is the way it is, and how the district aims to solve it (by “strongly encouraging” our hardworking teachers to fork over the little money they make, for the sake of the students) perfectly encapsulates the district as a whole, because after all this time, all of the trials and tribulations the district has enforced upon us, why on Earth would they shed us some clarity and show some decency?
In the video starring Aguilar and Ryan, there’s mention of how both district officials have kids in the district and that because of this, they’re struggling too. That these cuts will, by extension, affect them directly. They try and equate the fact that they have kids in the district to the real struggle of being a teacher and facing these pay cuts to an already minuscule salary.
But the fact that we don’t see or hear about him doing anything for the schools except sit in his office, make YouTube videos, and spend our money, doesn’t seem worthy of a raise to me. And after finding out that Superintendent Aguilar has a higher annual salary than the actual governor of California, I’m shocked my eyes aren’t permanently stuck in the back of my head from rolling them so hard.
While the state is the right for denying such a high budget, as it should be up to the district to get out of the debt they’ve accumulated, it’s not fair that the teachers are going to be penalized. The district workers and administration should be the ones facing repercussions for their actions, not the innocent teachers and other various faculty members who have no part in the district’s financial crisis.