Republican Senator Wants A Sub in Every Classroom

From the geniuses who brought you Texas' structural deficit:

AUSTIN — School districts should be allowed to give teachers unpaid furloughs and cut their salaries to help deal with a funding shortfall that one estimate says could cost 100,000 jobs, a leading state senator says. (State Senate Education Committee Chairman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano)

“One of those burdens that we have placed on our school districts is that they cannot decrease your salary. They can’t have furlough days. It’s not allowed in the law. The only option is to fire,” said Shapiro. “We need to give them the ability to lower teacher salaries.”

This is absurd and offensive on several levels. For one, teachers work way, way more than a 40 hour work week, and any teacher can tell you that having a sub just means more work - the planning that goes into it, leaving work for the students, and doing clean up and grading when you get back. So, making teachers take furlough days does not decrease their workload. It just slaps them in the face and gives them less pay. 

Secondly, substitutes teaching our kid instead of a highly trained educator? Are you kidding me? This is what we want for Texas at time when school becomes more high stakes for students at the high school level next year with twelve end of course tests? 

Republicans put this budget disaster on track with deregulation and tax cuts beginning in 2003, and their solution is to cut the pay of already low paid teachers? This is starting to remind me of an abusive marriage where the husband cheats on his wife and she is treated like its her fault, so she stays quiet and puts up with it. "Well, it's better than being poor and being out on the streets." That sort of thing. The fault of this lies squarely on the shoulders of Republicans, yet teachers are supposed to take less pay and thank a Republican for not taking all of their pay?

Come on, Senator Shapiro. Your Party set up the situation where we have this budget crisis. You really want to decrease the quality of our education system in Texas even further? Get into the Rainy Day Fund, increase fees or taxes - do something besides hurt Texas school children and send Texas' economic future spiraling down even further.