This Is What Happens...

This, I'd say is, at least in part, due to the concerted efforts of today's Republican leaders to demonize teachers, teachers' unions, and public education. Chris Christie and Scott Walker, among others, have touted their successes in breaking those unions. Virtually all of the R candidates have suggested teachers are overpaid.

A Washington survey shows that principals across the state are in “crisis mode” because of a shortage of substitute and full-time teachers. 

Yakima Herald reports that the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction found that 58 percent of elementary-school principals, 50 percent of middle-school principals and 45 percent of high-school principals say they’re in crisis trying to find substitutes. 

Some school administrators end up having to cover for classes for hours or even full days. In the state survey, 74 percent of principals reported personally doing so. Many school districts have bumped up substitute pay or hired emergency substitutes who aren’t fully qualified as a last resort.

I see this as yet another example of the long-term effects of short-sighted policies aimed, by teabagging Republicans, at the lowest common denominations of voters: whipping up resentment, finding scapegoats, dodging responsibility by suggesting that all our problems are due to spending tax money on unimportant things, like education or health care or food stamps, instead of on tax cuts for rich people and rich corporations, and on tanks.

What's more disturbing is the ease with which they're able to convince voters that they're right. But who cares, right? We got ours.

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