Lisa Clarke from SEVCA (Southeastern VT Community Action) speaks about how much additional stress is being put on services today:
We’re hearing this everywhere in the state: agencies which used to have downtime for providing assistance don’t have that. The need out there is beyond the capacity of many organizations to meet and technology only serves us to a certain extent.
I’ll be skipping a couple clips because the item I really want to get to for tomorrow is probably my favorite moment from the whole meeting and it’s how I think it’s best to end the series for the week. After tomorrow, I’ll resume with other clips starting next week.
I just heard from a friend who has been both administrative staff and teaching for over 10 years at Vermont Adult Learning (formerly Adult Basic Education). She’s been laid off. She’s over sixty. It seems like the opposite of what should happen in a recession — education ought to be top of the priority list for people who are job-hunting (and the state trying to rebuild a tax-paying middle class), but then again, if you’re job hunting, you probably don’t have much money to invest in intangibles.
Her take: Level funding from the state for years for adult education and literacy grant, increased expenses (rent, salaries, insurance), cuts in donations due to the financial crisis.
Then there’s the “help states save teachers’ jobs” bill in Congress having a hard time getting through thanks to Republicans’ culture of “No” and disdain for both education and the unemployed …
NanuqFC
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
ABE needs to strip down its administrative structure to one overall program for the state. There is little need for redundant administrators spread across the state. Let’s keep the teachers and tutors and weed out the administrators.