"no new taxes" remains a curse...

[acroyear]

Stranger Fruit: I get 12 days off … or maybe not. I blame the Republicans.:

Apparently I have to take 12 days of unpaid furlough before May 15th. And it can’t be days I teach on, i.e. it has to be Monday or Friday. All because the Republicans in the state senate want to gut K-16 education in Arizona. Seriously, in a state that hasn’t raised state taxes in 20 years, we’re having to do this to keep education afloat. A read somewhere that a 1c sales tax on alcohol would keep the K-16 system afloat, but no … that would be raising taxes.

What galls is simply this. Staff on furlough will go home and rest. Sure, they’re not being paid, but they will at least rest. Faculty will do what faculty do - prepare classes, read, grade, maintain labs; all the usual stuff we do, except for twelve days we’ll be working for free. We’d love to have the balls to take those days off but it’s not like we can say to our students, “Sorry, yesterday I was on furlough so I didn’t prepare the class … so talk among yourselves.” We have a commitment to the students that we made when they signed up for our classes … so we don’t get to take days off.

Don’t get me wrong … I’d rather have this than lose my job, but I cant help but feel that the administration realizes that the faculty will keep on trucking because, hey, that’s what we do. Do they save money? Yes. Do we work any less? No.

Dear "no new taxes" assholes: fucking get over yourselves.

Comments

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

http://asunews.asu.edu/20090128_furloughprogram

Why do I think that Arizona has something similar to Maryland where a LARGE portion of the state budget cannot be cut so the 'discretionary' portions get walloped when we have a bad situation.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

teacher salaries should never be considered "discretionary".