Yesterday I read Kos Community Micro Loans, and I think that's a lovely idea for someone who may be considering a payday lender and who can pay it back. A few days ago, I silently commisserated with laurustina as I read her diary because I identify with her so much. Many of us need more than a little help. To editorialize on an old proverb -- loans (or even donations) are feeding us fish. What we want and need is to fish. We need jobs.
In the next couple of weeks, Wendy Kopp (Teach for America) will be placing more than 5000 unqualified amateurs in classrooms across the country to give unsuspecting poor black and Hispanic kids a lousy education. Her husband, Richard Barth (KIPP) will be placing many unqualified people in principal and administration jobs as well to collect high salaries as they do the bidding of Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and others.
We, you and I -- taxpayers -- have given them $100 million to create a great jobs program for unqualified, uncertified people favored by the very rich -- $50 million to Teach for America and $50 million to KIPP Foundation. It's a jobs program for the children and friends of the elite. Not to mention millions more spent on The New Teacher Project, New Schools New Orleans, IDEA Public Schools and the School of One. All jobs programs for the elite -- not educators.
Here's what I don't get. If this administration can give $100 million of our tax dollars to two individuals, who have no expertise in education, to hire thousands more who have no expertise in education, why can't it create a jobs program for me -- a highly knowledgeable, experienced educator/administrator?
I'm so angry about this. I worked all my career to be an excellent educator, and now because of that, I'm shut out of my own profession. So, I did something really foolish. Really, really foolish. And I'm not sorry. Follow me.
In 2006, I took a teaching job in Florida after having taught up north for most of my career. Floridians had just voted to lower class sizes and needed more teachers. In 2007, Floridians foolishly believed politicians who told them a property tax cut would have no effect on education. In 2008, as a result of loss of revenue from that tax cut, 900 teachers in my district alone lost their jobs. Those with experience and without tenure, like me, were the first to go. I've been unemployed since -- for three years.
That's not the worst of it. I am a reading specialist which requires another endorsement on top of a B.S. I also have a Masters and Administration credentials. I was replaced by a marketing major who soon quit. He was replaced by a substitute teacher who had only a high school diploma because that's all that is required of substitutes in Florida. I'm told this is not an uncommon practice there.
After having planned well my entire life for retirement -- I just hadn't planned on it in my fifties -- I now have nothing left. Huge legal fees (through no fault of my own) gobbled up a good deal of my savings. Trying to maintain a fairly modest lifestyle with no income soon ate up the rest -- because for a while I was sure I would get another job -- in hind site, that was a mistake. I've lost my home, my car, my health care, my savings, and quite a chunk of my dignity over the past three years. I send one resume after another out into the abyss -- NOTHING happens.
I recently got a job through a government program that puts seniors back to work. I did work 20 hours a week for minimum wage doing a job that would pay five times as much in the private sector if anyone was hiring. Last month my hours were reduced because of the budget cuts enacted earlier this year. I will lose the job in December. I also volunteer as the tutor coordinator of Portland Public Schools. I try to stay busy so I won't have to think about survival. I blog at Great Schools for America to fight against "education reform" that is destroying our public schools. I fight to protect children because our leaders won't.
I shyly pay for food with my food stamp card hoping the cashier will not judge my purchase too harshly. I want to say to him/her, "I'm a good person. I work hard. I just don't make much money." I don't sleep nights trying to think of ways to get money to pay my bills. I need $680 a month for rent and utilities. I don't buy anything else. My net pay is $540 a month. A little loan will not help me because I can never catch up. I am a burden on my children, unthinkable just a few years ago. I borrow money from them each month, asking with a burning lump in my throat that I cannot suppress, holding back tears. I am thankful I'm not homeless as so many here are. My children are generous and wonderful, but I can't keep begging. I can't.
I'm so angry. How can America hate its citizens so much?
So, I did something very foolish. I bought a one-way ticket to Washington, D.C. with half my rent money to attend the Save Our Schools March. I have to go. I don't know how I'm getting home or how I will pay my rent. But I just have to go.
I may just stay until President Obama and Congress agree to "create" a job for me as they did for the minions of the Billionaire Boys. I've nothing better to do. I've had enough. I can't go on living like this. I need help. I need a job.
I leave July 26th.