Fund Our Future, Stand For Justice! |
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VICTORY & CONTINUED STRUGGLE On Monday June 28th the Durham county commissioners voted on a final budget for 2010-2011. At the beginning of the budget season the commissioners and the school board were at odds and the county was opposed to raising taxes for anything but debt service. But three months of organizing later we find ourselves with a 1.79 cent increase specifically for schools and a school board/county agreement for use of lottery funds that together save 185 jobs. This wasn’t given to us. It came after students, teachers, and community members came together to fight. The Umbrella Coalition led a 3-mile 350+ person march, organized a town hall with state, county, and school board officials, spoke out at numerous hearings, and worked with officials to make this budget possible. You can read about the final budget here and the Coalition’s statement below. We, the Umbrella Coalition, comprised of students, teachers, and local residents, are grateful that 185 teaching jobs were saved from this year’s budget cuts. We acknowledge the school board and county commissioners for working with each other, with us, and with the thousands of Durham residents who were active in this process. In prioritizing public education in Durham, our elected officials both learned and demonstrated an important lesson in the democratic process. However, our demand for full funding for public education was not met. Fifty-two teaching positions in Durham county will now go unfilled, which means that countless students will be without the mentorship of a teacher who would have made a crucial difference in their lives. The reality of fifty-two fewer teachers means that class sizes will be much greater, and the chance of student success much less. In fact, the annual challenge should revolve around increasing the number of classroom positions, not preserving the already too few that exist. Our success as a community depends upon our future leaders and our current teachers having even more than we currently have. Beyond teachers, we are also dismayed at the loss of support personnel and non-instructional positions. These individuals, and the crucial positions that they fill, are as much the lifeblood of the school as the classroom instructors. Additionally, the loss of critical programs like the ILT mentorship program and AVID, among others, leaves our teachers, support staff, and most importantly students, without the tools that they need to be as successful as they possibly can. While we acknowledge the partial victory that this budget represents, we are clear that the struggle for effective, democratically-run schools is far from over. We hold to our demands: 1) full-funding for public education; 2) access to all levels of education regardless of immigration status; and 3) collective bargaining rights for public sector workers. We plan to continue to wage this fight at multiple levels of government, from the county, to the state, to the federal government. The tenacity with which thousands of students, school workers, and community members have stood up for themselves and their rights has inspired us and left us convinced that we can, and must, continue this struggle. We will continue to engage in our democratic rights. We’ll see you in August. The Umbrella Coalition |
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