I’m at the Starbucks in Hartford, Connecticut this Saturday. We’re here for the graduation of our youngest nephew from Trinity College.
We’re staying at the Downtown Marriott, a large hotel attached to the Hartford Convention Center. The Connecticut Republicans are holding their state convention here this weekend. The hotel is full of them. Connecticut Republicans. They just sort of moved the Greenwich Country Club membership an hour to the north. It is the largest assembly of blue blazers, pressed Dockers and penny loafers in the universe.
This is not in the tradition of progressive Connecticut. The state was the home of Roger Baldwin, one of the founders of the Connecticut Abolition Society. Baldwin, along with John Quincy Adams, became known for their heroic defense of the Amistad slave revolt of 1839.
Unfortunately, today the political leaders of the state are neither as progressive or heroic. Following the Clinton welfare cuts of the 1990s, Connecticut quickly slashed it’s cash allotments to welfare recipients. Those who have lost their jobs during the present Great Recession, and Connecticut has been hit particularly hard, live in a state with the shortest time line for state welfare aid in the entire country. Stories abound of single mothers having to sell their federal food stamps for pennies on the dollar to pay their rent or buy their children clothing.
No final exams at the University of Puerto Rico this year.
The NY Times reports:
The seven entry gates on the largest campus of the University of Puerto Rico system remained chained shut on Thursday. Beyond improvised barricades were hundreds of students in makeshift camps, some with portable showers and stoves, hardly engaged in the typical college springtime routine of studying for final exams and preparing for graduation.
Rockford teacher job fair was more like speed dating.
Molly Phelan of the Rockford Teachers Association writes:
What happened on April 24 and 25 to hundreds of Rockford Public School teachers was anything but professional. Many of our newest teachers applied for more than 50 jobs. Some were granted no interviews at all. Others had only a few interviews.
These teachers were forced to participate in what was called a job fair. In reality, what these teachers experienced looked and felt a lot more like speed dating.
There were just 20 total minutes for the teacher and the interviewer teams to meet and get to know each other.
Interview teams struggled to have a meaningful conversation with the teachers at the same time they were looking at a writing sample and thumbing through a portfolio that took hours to assemble. There was barely time for administrators to ask questions. Let alone allowing the teacher to ask any.
This was completely unprofessional.
The nation’s teachers face a Depression-level job situation.
Wing-nut pundits who hold down six figure jobs at think tanks applaud the firing of teachers. But real teachers who search for work in real cities face job prospects not seen since the Great Depression.
The recession seems to have penetrated a profession long seen as recession-proof. Superintendents, education professors and people seeking work say teachers are facing the worst job market since the Great Depression. Amid state and local budget cuts, cash-poor urban districts like New York City and Los Angeles, which once hired thousands of young people every spring, have taken down the help-wanted signs.
Fred Klonsky 