If you liked Washington's Wall Street bailout and stimulus programs, you'll love the EduJobs legislation percolating in Congress.
The $23 billion Keep Our Educators Working Act would "prevent layoffs of teachers and other education personnel and, perhaps, give us a leg up on the funding cliff coming next budget year," said Mark Pudlow, spokesman for the Florida Education Association.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said, "The federal government didn't let Wall Street fail. Why would we do less for our public schools, which undeniably are too important to fail?"
Citing a national survey that forecast 275,000 teachers and other school staff will receive pink slips next fall, Weingarten said, "Almost every state will be unable to provide adequate funding for public schools until the financial situation improves."
The Obama administration, which supports the EduJobs package as "emergency relief," went even further, projecting 300,000 layoffs in the teaching ranks alone. The White House also claimed that 400,000 teacher jobs were saved by the stimulus bill.
But critics say the fuzziness of the numbers undermines the measure. The National Education Association previously predicted 133,000 layoffs.
And noting continued unemployment woes despite the infusion of more than $800 billion in federal funds to "create" or "save" jobs, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich., said, "Fundamentally, what you're seeing is the failure of the stimulus."
Even the teacher-friendly Washington Post editorial board lamented that last year’s stimulus bill had created among educators “an unfortunate expectation of yet more federal dollars to bail out the states.”
“Should the federal government spend money it doesn't have to let school systems operate beyond their means?” the Post's May 14 editorial asked.
Florida's Republican lawmakers, though partaking of stimulus dollars, are skeptical about pumping more federal money into schools.
"The House Republican leadership in Florida has been very cautious and wary about accepting stimulus dollars," said Jill Chamberlin, spokeswoman for House Speaker Larry Cretul's office.
"The budget we passed preserves K-12 funding, so while school districts — like Florida working people and families —will have to be careful to live within their means, we don’t expect any 'horrendous' outcomes," she added.
The FEA's Pudlow takes a dimmer view.
"Nearly every district is looking at cuts in their budgets this coming school year, which would make the fifth straight year of cuts. This federal money would mean teachers wouldn’t have to be laid off, other school personnel might keep their jobs and programs for students might not have to be cut," Pudlow said.
Further, Pudlow sees EduJobs as a natural follow-on to the stimulus program.
"The stimulus money prevented the economy from totally collapsing. Now, just as indicators are showing that recovery is taking hold, the last thing this economy needs is another round of layoffs," he said.
"The stimulus wasn’t big enough the first time around relative to the scope of the financial problem. This will help our economy from sliding, just as it’s gaining traction."
To push EduJobs forward, the NEA is staging a national telephone blitz from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday.
Members are instructed to call an NEA toll-free number where they'll be given recorded instructions before being patched through to the congressional switchboard.
The EduJobs measure, according to Mike Antonucci of the Sacramento, Calif.-based Education Intelligence Agency, is facing opposition not just due to its cost, but because it would be attached to a supplemental appropriations bill to fund disaster relief and military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This bit of legislative legerdemain has emboldened critics to brand the program as nothing more than a costly sop to teachers unions.
"The U.S. Department of Education and the teachers unions (and bend-over-backwards education writers) all say there's some sort of teacherpocalypse already upon us. It's impressive, and shameless, and it's sort of working," Alexander Russo wrote in "This Week in Education."
Pointing out that the size of the U.S. teaching force more than doubled increases in student enrollment over the past decade, Russo stated, "Long live the teaching bubble. May it never pop. Because teachers unions aren't on their last legs. They're the industry that's still too big to fail."
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Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or (772) 801-5341.