Students, faculty hurt by higher ed cuts

Gov. Paterson's cuts to SUNY and CUNY will spell disaster for an already overtaxed system. With the economy in the state that it's in, many people are looking to go back to college, and CUNY and SUNY are their first choices as the most affordable options.

At CUNY Kingsborough, where I work as an academic adviser, we have 3,000 more students on campus this fall than we did last fall.

In the weeks before the first day of class, we literally ran out of classes to give students.

We raised the number of seats in each section to the maximum that our classrooms can legally hold.

We encouraged students to defer, and we even told around a thousand students that they would have to be part-time students and, if they wanted to get financial aid, they would have to commit to taking classes in the winter intersession.

When I started at Kingsborough in January 2008, my advising case load was 50 students.

This semester it would be more than 400, except that our dean realized there was no way we could do caseloads with so many students, and we're all seeing whoever walks through the door now.

Adjunct professors are quadrupling up in offices. The public buses to campus are so crowded that some of the drivers won't even stop to pick up passengers; there is no more room.

That's how bad it is right now.

Now, cut the budget, so that we need to begin laying off employees. Cut the number of professors teaching those classes. You will have to run fewer sections of the classes, and you will have to turn more students away, or cram them into classrooms and pray the fire marshal doesn't visit.

Maybe each professor can teach more sections, but the union limits the number of sections a professor can teach for a reason.

Cut the number of academic advisers, career counselors, personal counselors and other support staff available to students.

Each staffer will be required to see more and more students, and the quality of the support will fall.

Cut the number of maintenance or security staff. What if the building isn't properly maintained and someone gets hurt.

We don't have enough security staff to keep the thousands of people on campus safe.

George J. Hill
Kingsborough Community College

Social justice activities make unionist proud

In the Oct. 15 New York Teacher, an essay titled "Why Are You Sweeping?" described one teacher's experiences with a Labor-Religion Coalition-sponsored delegation that met and worked with the poor and with Fair Trade activists in Nicaragua.

A short article in the same issue reported on NYSUT members supporting hotel workers in Latham who are attempting to claim their rights as union members.

These are the kinds of activities that make me proud of my union.

Elizabeth Neubert Myers
Scottsville

NYS should look at innovative models

We read with interest your article in the New York Teacher on New York's new education commissioner and his ideas about improving teacher preparation.

As former director of the University at Buffalo's Teacher Education Institute and a teacher educator in three other states, I agree with most of his comments.

They're lined up with what Arthur Levine and others have been suggesting for years, and I'm sure he'll get lots of support for saying the things you reported.

However, if he wants to think more creatively about the issue, he'll look not at colleges and mentoring programs in schools but at future New York teachers before they even get to college.

Colleges have been moving for years toward clinical practice models in ways he's called a future "sea change," and most school districts have better new-teacher programs now than they did 10 years ago.

What's missing from all of these critics' proposals are good programs for kids who are interested in teaching.

There are good models around. Los Angeles Unified School District has 15 high school teaching academies, coordinated by their Career Ladder office.

The Chicago Pipeline program links Chicago public high schools with Illinois State University's teacher education establishment and eventual employment in Chicago.

Missouri's A+ tutoring program, coordinated by its school improvement office, gives financial aid to start their college careers to tens of thousands of high school students who complete 50 clock hours of guided experience teaching other students.

Although South Carolina's Teacher Cadet program requires far fewer hours of experience, it is a national leader in linking high school teaching experiences with college partners to nurture future teachers.

New York can do better. I encourage NYSUT and Commissioner Steiner to look beyond the crowd of education critics, all of whom say the same things with different words, and do something more adventurous.

J. Terry Gates
The Hoenny Center for Research and Development in Teaching
St. Louis

Future, says…

Where's thy future
When there's breakage
Around the brim…
Where's thy mustard seed
If laggard hope
Is what you purchased
With a Japanese yen
And not your own currency
To win...
When elder's robes
Work their woe
To keep out the young…
When separation at the door
Yields not once, but many more

A shameful variance within
contempt…
To eat the bitter bread
Of baleful grief
The tears thus mounting
While the rich flourish
Great and free…
All attempts to grovel
the poor down
Where's our wholesome
ancestors
To circle future
from a devouring flame.

Horace Myers
Riverside