Educators Greet Jobs Funding With Relief, Optimism
August 11, 2010 by khart
Filed under Education Funding, Featured News, Jobs, Teacher Firings, Top Stories
By Kevin Hart
One day after the House passed and President Barack Obama signed a $10 billion education jobs fund projected to save 161,000 public school jobs, educators across the Internet are reacting with a mixture of excitement and concern about when, or if, they will be recalled to work.
Pamela Furtado-Hood, a kindergarten teacher from Massachusetts, posted on NEA’s Speak Up For Education & Kids Facebook page that she was moved to tears after learning that Congress was finally able to pass legislation that will send educators in every part of the country back to work.
Furtado-Hood was one of nearly 36,000 Speak Up For Education & Kids Facebook activists who generated thousands of phone calls and tens of thousands of e-mails during the campaign to pass education jobs funding.
The fans included a wide coalition of educators, parents, grandparents, students, and community activists.
One parent-fan, Alicia Plant of Georgia, posted that her daughter had just started kindergarten in an overcrowded classroom, and that she was hoping that the funds could allow classes to return to more manageable sizes.
Many educators were eager to learn when and how the funds would be distributed, and whether they would be able to return to work this school year.
Connecticut teacher Nancy Hodges Barlow shared that she was going through “classroom prep withdrawal” and was hopeful that the education jobs funding would allow her to return to work.
“I am very excited for this,” she wrote. “I want to be back in the classroom soon.”
Barlow’s sentiment was shared by several laid-off educators, who said they are anxious to see the money distributed to states and school districts as soon as possible, so educators could be rehired before too much of the school year elapsed.
State governors must apply for the education jobs funding, and the U.S. Department of Education announced yesterday that it was introducing a streamlined application procedure to get the funds flowing to states quickly.
As the $10 billion makes its way to schools, jobs and critical academic programs can be restored, and class sizes can be reduced.
“This is an amazing victory for our kids,” wrote California teacher Richard Smith.
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