Wednesday, March 16, 2011

PAYING FOR CALIFORNIA'S MASSIVE DEFICITS CAUSED BY ILLEGALS - Long Beach, California: Public schools targeted for massive cuts, layoffs

WHO REALLY PAYS FOR THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE IN OUR BORDERS?

NOT THE EMPLOYERS OF ILLEGALS!

NOT THE HISPANDERING POLITICIANS!

CA OPERATES UNDER DEFICITS OF $28 BILLION, WHILE PAYING OUR SOCIAL SERVICES TO ILLEGALS OF $20 BILLION PER YEAR!

LOS ANGELES COUNTY ALONE PUTS OUT $600 MILLION PER YEAR, AND THAT FIGURE ONLY GOES UP AS DOES LATINO BREEDING RATES.




Long Beach, California: Public schools targeted for massive cuts, layoffs





Long Beach, California: Public schools targeted for massive cuts, layoffs


By Tom Carter and Kim Saito

16 March 2011

Under the pretext of balancing the budget, California Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, in collaboration with city and local governments, as well as the state workers’ unions, is preparing to implement massive cuts to pensions, public education, health care, and other social programs. In anticipation, school boards throughout the state are announcing school closures, eliminating programs and issuing layoff notices.



In a foretaste of the sweeping cuts to come across California, the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) authorized the sending out of nearly 1,200 preliminary layoff notices, or “pink slips,” to teachers, counselors, and administrative staff. Over the past two months alone, the district has announced $60 million in cuts.



Long Beach, once known as the “International City,” is home to a large and growing population of immigrants from throughout the Pacific Rim and Central America. More than 87,000 students attend LBUSD schools, making the system the third largest in the state. Since 2008, LBUSD has slashed spending by more than $200 million.



The latest round of cuts features school closures, an increase in kindergarten- through third-grade class sizes from an average of 20 to 30 students, and the reduction or elimination of educational programs that teach computer, health, and service skills. There are predictions that class sizes could reach as high as 40 in the coming years.



WSWS reporters recently spoke to teachers and school staff in Long Beach about the situation.



A teacher who has worked for 20 years at Burroughs Elementary School, which was just identified as one of the schools that will be shuttered, told the WSWS, “Our campus is beautiful. We have grass and trees. There are only 297 kids, so it’s like a family. The teachers are familiar with all the kids, and the kids know each other. And now they’re fearful about the changes; they’re feeling very nervous because they’re going to get split up.”



“I have 35 students in my classroom. My goal is to have a personal conversation with each child every day. But when you have 35 kids, I can’t even give them two minutes of my time with all the material we have to get through and then get them ready for testing. I have a wide span of levels, from first to fifth grade levels. We have no specialists for ELD [English Language Development] kids.”



Another teacher who had worked at the same school for 26 years said, “The district’s been sending their people here with their clipboards and drawings of the school. They’re coming in, examining things—and we haven’t even left yet. We considered that very insensitive.”



The public employee unions in Long Beach, which supported Brown and the Democratic Party in recent elections, have refused to mount any struggle against the closures and layoffs, while at the same time agreeing to major concessions from their members.



The Long Beach chapter of the California School Employees Association (CSEA), which represents custodians, maintenance workers, and other school support staff, recently entered into an agreement that raises employee health care contributions, suspends salary increases based on years of experience, and includes additional “furlough days,” or unpaid leave.



The union’s prostration before the cuts has elicited praise from state officials. “I deeply appreciate the willingness of CSEA’s leadership to consider some reasonable compromises during these lean times for public schools,” LBUSD Superintendent Chris Steinhauser said in a statement.



Asked about the union, a school custodian with 11 years experience in the district told the WSWS, “I know how they work—you pay your union dues, and you get laid off.”



The teachers and other school staff who provided interviews urged WSWS reporters not to use their names out of fear of being targeted in the next round of layoffs.

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FROM:


JUDICIALWATCH. Org… get on their emails



SANCTUARY COUNTY LOS ANGELES SPENDS $600 MILLION ON WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS

County Spends $600 Mil On Welfare For Illegal Immigrants

Last Updated: Thu, 03/11/2010 - 3:14pm

For the second consecutive year taxpayers in a single U.S. county will dish out more than half a billion dollars just to cover the welfare and food-stamp costs of illegal immigrants.

Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, may be in the midst of a dire financial crisis but somehow there are plenty of funds for illegal aliens. In January alone, anchor babies born to the county’s illegal immigrants collected more than $50 million in welfare benefits. At that rate the cash-strapped county will pay around $600 million this year to provide illegal aliens’ offspring with food stamps and other welfare perks.



THE EXORBITANT FIGURE DOES NOT INCLUDE THE ENORMOUS COST OF EDUCATING, MEDICALLY TREATING, OR INCARCERATING ILLEGALS ALIENS. THIS COSTS THE COUNTY AN ADDITIONAL ONE BILLION DOLLARS.



The exorbitant figure, revealed this week by a county supervisor, doesn’t even include the enormous cost of educating, medically treating or incarcerating illegal aliens in the sprawling county of about 10 million residents. Los Angeles County annually spends more than $1 billion for those combined services, including $500 million for healthcare and $350 million for public safety.

About a quarter of the county’s welfare and food stamp issuances go to parents who reside in the United States illegally and collect benefits for their anchor babies, according to the figures from the county’s Department of Social Services. In 2009 the tab ran $570 million and this year’s figure is expected to increase by several million dollars.

Illegal immigration continues to have a “catastrophic impact on Los Angeles County taxpayers,” the veteran county supervisor (Michael Antonovich) who revealed the information has said. The former fifth-grade history teacher has repeatedly come under fire from his liberal counterparts for publicizing statistics that confirm the devastation illegal immigration has had on the region. Antonovich, who has served on the board for nearly three decades, represents a portion of the county that is roughly twice the size of Rhode Island and has about 2 million residents.

His district is simply a snippet of a larger crisis. Nationwide, Americans pay around $22 billion annually to provide illegal immigrants with welfare benefits that include food assistance programs such as free school lunches in public schools, food stamps and a nutritional program (known as WIC) for low-income women and their children. Tens of billions more are spent on other social services, medical care, public education and legal costs such as incarceration and public defenders.

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