Education Is Under Attack

During his town hall tour, NC House Speaker Thom Tillis has a slick answer for every question, but they have little to do with reality. When asked about early childhood education, Tillis says we need more funding! But the reality is far different. Check out the evidence:

Tillis's statements raise two questions.

1. If he is so committed to increasing investments in early childhood education, why did his budget cut Smart Start and More at Four by 20%?

2. Why does he continue to ignore Judge Manning's order and Gov. Perdue's Pre-K plan? We've had four special sessions, but there's no time for the kids?

Time is running out for the 6,300 four-year-olds booted from NC Pre-K (More at Four) by the state budget. If lawmakers don't act before January those kids won't get any help before they start school.

Before a meeting of the Education Oversight Committee on Oct. 4, Co-Chair Senator Jerry Tillman of Randolph County defended the state budget, reiterating the promise that lawmakers made to protect teachers and teacher assistants - despite evidence to the contrary. Sen. Tillman even went a step further, claiming all the teachers that had been laid off were being rehired.

Sen. Tillman: "Check the ESC report that's coming out October 21st, and you will see that there are few if any teacher positions lost, or teacher assistants."

The NC Employment Security Commission report released today indicates 13,700 fewer government jobs over the past month, proving Sen. Tillman's prediction wrong.

In response, Progress NC released the following statement:

"Sen. Tillman ought to put away his crystal ball, and instead do his job by getting the teachers back in the classroom. Lawmakers attempts to deny the harmful cuts they made to education or to blame others for teacher layoffs are losing credibility by the day. Today's ESC report is more evidence that lawmaker's aren't shooting straight with the people of North Carolina." - Gerrick Brenner, Executive Director of Progress North Carolina

Thom Tillis, in the middle of his town hall tour, still can't get his story straight on education cuts. In Wilmington, he dodged. In Salisbury, he blamed superintendents. And Friday in Waxhaw, he came up with a whopper.

See below for Tillis' rambling 8-minute answer to a question from Union County Superintendent Ed Davis.

So let's add up all of Tillis' answers to education cuts:

1) I don't know

2) Blame superintendents

3) Reduce per pupil funding in poor performing districts
 
4) Sell Rex Hospital
 
5) Sell the NC Railroad
 
6) Sell $52M in state real estate
 
7) Sell $2B in state assets
 
8) Hold a forum
 
9) Deregulate local school districts from state rules

Superintendent Davis saw right through Tillis' schtick when he quipped, "I sure hope all of that can be done in time to help us out next year."

This summer the NC General Assembly was faced with a budget shortfall of over $2.5 billion. In the end, lawmakers faced a simple choice: either layoff teachers, teacher assistants and make other painful cuts to education or keep a temporary one cent sales tax. 

What did Thom Tillis, Phil Berger and the rest of the leadership choose to do?

They gutted education and laid off teachers, while claiming they were fully funded:

"... we have a budget that restores all the K-12 education funding for teachers and teacher assistants. The minute this budget gets signed, those folks don't have to worry about being out of a job three weeks from now."

- NC House Speaker Thom Tillis State House Speaker, 6/3/2011

"You said you wanted full funding for teachers and teacher assistants.  In this budget, you got that."

- NC Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, 6/10/201

Whether they were intentionally misleading the public or not, the facts are in and the negative conseuqneces are devastating. According to the NC Department of Public Instruction at least 1,853 teachers and teacher assistants have been laid off statewide, while more than 4,300 classroom jobs were eliminated.

Combining statistics from NCDPI, the UNC System and Smart Start indicate at least 11,000 education jobs have been eliminated due the state budget cuts.

Those numbers don't even take into account the various other cuts to our schools and classrooms, such as cutting teacher assistant pay in Wake County, slashed programs like middle school sports in Mecklenburg County or the closing of high-achieving Academy Heights Elementary in Moore County.

We suspect that the number of jobs lost will continue to rise as more reports come in from universities, community colleges and pre-k programs.

Here is a complete list of the K-12 job losses reported so far:

K-12

The damage done by budget cuts isn't limited to our schools. Employment data suggests that while private sector employment saw modest gains of late, state and local government layoffs, a majority of which are education-related, are behind the recent increase in our state unemployment rate.

As you can see here, while public sector employment collapsed in the last two months, our state unemployment rate jumped above 10%.