House education budget writers are deferring to their bosses on whether to propose teacher furloughs for the next two school years.
Chairs of the House education appropriations subcommittee said the chairs of the overall appropriations committee will decide whether to propose a 5-day teacher furlough for the 2009-2010 school year and a ten-day furlough for the following year.
The idea would save an estimated $100 million in the '09-'10 year and $200 millin in the '10 - '11 school year.
"A furlough lets us keep people" employed, said Rep. Ray Rapp, a Madison County Democrat and co-chair of the education subcommittee.
Local school districts can decide how to impose the furloughs, such as shortening the school year, canceling teacher work days or otherwise spreading the days out over the year.
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Re: Teacher furloughs punted upstairs
What? The kids get a day off when their teacher gets furloughed? Anybody out there awake? Ever heard of "substitute teachers"? Do you think the kids get the day off and the subs work for free? Whatnell are these people thinking? A family member is a first-year teacher who has taken a $75 hit per paycheck but continues to go to class. I'm 62; when I went to elementary and high school (no middle schools existed then) the school year began Sept. 1 or thereabouts and ended June 1. Now the school year begins about the fourth week of August and will end June 10. Why? Teacher "work days." No teacher work days existed in the 1950s and 1960s and students and teachers managed to survive, got out for a full three months of summer vacation where kids could go on a week vacation, usually week of July 4, and had a great time at the beach or mountains (the teachers, who worked summer jobs, came back to school one week before classes began) and everybody was happy AND we got a first-class education (I can read and write the English language). As George Wallace so aptly put it, now education is being run by the smarter-than-us "pointy-headed intellek-shuls" on college campuses and the guvmint and what a fine mess we're in. Somebody should ask Obama to wave his fairy godmother's wand over this and cure public education's ills.