NC Budget and the Job Search...Huh?

My daughter is a teacher in North Carolina.  Like many teachers she works hard for very little pay.  Her hours are long (7:00 am – 7:00 pm) and every year she digs into her own pocket for school supplies.

This week the state budget in NC passed and it included no raises for teachers, the elimination of tenure, the elimination of the incentive to obtain a graduate degree, the elimination of jobs for teacher assistants, cuts to instructional supplies and a shift of $10 million to income-based vouchers for private schools. In April they passed a bill to eliminate limits on classroom size.

What does this have to do with a job search blog? Well, some simple statistics may explain:

·       The NC Unemployment Rate is 8.8%

·       The NC Labor Underutilization Rate is 16.2% *

*“The total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers.” (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Not all kids get to go to private or charter schools; some stay in public school.  What about them? You don’t have to be a genius to know that cuts to public education lead to larger classroom size and a larger classroom size leads to less one on one attention to the students. A learning assistant could have helped with that larger classroom but now her position has been eliminated further increasing the unemployment rate and even worse, seriously affecting the learning process for the children. 

So what’s the outcome?   

All children will not get the education that they deserve. Period. Their learning will suffer and they will eventually give up.  When they give up their employment prospects will be severely limited and the unemployment rates and labor underutilization numbers will continue to rise.  Do you see a cycle here?

Over the past several years there has been push towards comprehensive STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) within all levels of the education system. This push is supposed to enhance our ability to be competitive in the future workplace.  For most people, especially women and minorities, a solid background in STEM will provide a strong foundation and an opportunity to thrive professionally.  Taking away the finances to support this and other educational initiatives will only further push the unemployment cycle within the state.

I’m no politician.  I’m a job search trainer and coach and I see a lot of despair and unhappiness because people lack education and resources. Why would a state (this week it is NC but it could be any state) take away any and all incentives to the teachers and especially the students who will ultimately suffer the consequences?