One of the nice things about working in education is I always told my friends it was a guaranteed job. Regardless of what the economy did, there would always be a need for teachers, so we weren’t going to find ourselves destitute any time soon. That may still hold true to some extent, but the education system is about to take a big hit.
While looking through the real estate information about my home city in California, I realized that there is an entire community in the midst of foreclosure. In the middle of that community, a brand new elementary school. Millions of tax dollars were invested in a school that may soon lose the students necessary to keep those doors open. Homes in foreclosure are being abandoned, leaving neighbors to decide whether they should stick it out virtually alone, or abandon their homes as well. On this interesting blog, the author posts a picture of bobcats hanging out in an abandoned neighborhood. Yes, you read that correctly, bobcats hanging out in a neighborhood that is virtually abandoned.
Short of enrolling these unusual students in the classroom, I am not sure how the local elementary school is going to deal with the loss of an entire subdivision, for I am sure that once the word gets around that bobcats have moved in, anyone left is bound to leave.
School districts have faced loss due to population drift, but in some of these cases, the district just passed huge bond measures to build schools fast enough to keep up with the housing boom. These are the same districts that are facing, not a drift, but an exodus. What cuts will districts have to make to keep up with the tax loss from the houses no longer selling as well as the revenue loss from students no longer attending? What happens to the teachers of these schools? One might argue the teachers will have to move where the students are moving, but these teachers are going to have to sell their houses in order to move, and that’s just not realistic.
I’m afraid that as much as we would like to believe the optimistic economists who say 2009 is our turn around year, we are still far from the bottom. There is still quite a bit that needs to shake out. In the end, before it starts to all come back together, someone is going to have to ask the bobcats to leave. Nicely.
-Ted Murcray
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