FRESNO, Calif. — The number of veterinarians who work with farm animals is on the decline as many retire and fewer students choose large-animal practice. Officials are worried about the impact on food safety, because large-animal veterinarians serve as inspectors at ranches and slaughterhouses. “They’re basically on the front line when it comes to maintaining a safe food supply, not only in the U.S., but in products we export. Vets diagnose diseases that can be transferred from animals to humans,” says David Kirkpatrick, spokesman for the American Veterinary Medical Association. A recent survey by the association found that only 2% of veterinary school students in 2010 graduating classes said they plan to work mostly with large, non-pet animals. Another 7% studied a mixed curriculum that included all types of animals, but the majority of those respondents lean toward pet care. “We have known for years anecdotally that vets were having a difficult time finding people to work at their practice or selling it when they retire,” Kirkpatrick said. “But now we know how big the problem is and how that will magnify over the years,” he said. QUALITY: Shrinking beef market may mean poorer meat at stores From 1998 to 2009, the number of small animal vets climbed to 47,118 from 30,255, while the number of farm-animal vets dropped to 5,040 from 5,553. And the AVMA found that large-animal vets often earn a lower salary: an average of $57,745 compared with $64,744 for small-animal vets, according to a 2008 survey. The large-animal vet world is graying — half of farm-animal vets are older than 50, and only 4.4% are younger than 30. About a third of veterinarians working at the federal level are eligible to retire in the next three years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture . At least six rural counties in California have just one large-animal veterinarian. Stuart Hall, 28, a veterinarian in Visalia, Calif., said a single call can tie him up for four hours — time in which he can’t respond to emergencies. “My worry is always that a farmer is going to try to take care of something themselves,” he said. Hall was born in rural England and educated in London before his interest in working with cows brought him to Tulare County, the nation’s largest dairy producer, five years ago. He and his wife have a blog detailing his life as a farm vet. “I just really like cows. They’re big, old gentle things,” he says. Hall likes working outdoors, the drives through the country and the impact his expertise can have on food operations, he says. But for pre-vet student Justeen Borrecco the decision to pursue a career in pet medicine was easy. She has been shoved, bruised and knocked down by the sheep she feeds every day as a student worker at the on-campus farm at California State University, Fresno. “This is why I want to work with dogs and kitties. I don’t want to deal with anything bigger than me,” the 19-year-old said. On Thursday she pulled on her farm boots, picked up bundles of hay and maneuvered her 130-pound frame around to feed dozens of ewes and lambs. “But it’s still good experience. Anything I learn or help with, like vaccines or bandaging, can apply to other animals,” Borrecco said. The sophomore from Hanford, Calif., said it’s important to get as much hands-on time with animals before applying to vet school. Several schools and states have tried to lure students to large-animal veterinary medicine. At the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine, applicants interested in becoming farm-animal vets have an admissions edge. The university has slowly boosted the number of students interested in large-animal medicine to 11 of 127, double the number from four years ago. The vet school has also reached out to high schools in rural areas. More than a dozen states, from Washington to Georgia, offer some type of loan repayment program or other incentives if students pledge to work in a region in need of large-animal vets. Vet students typically finish school with about $134,000 in debt, according to the AVMA. Iowa State’s VSMART program allows students focused on farm animals to reduce by a year the amount of time it takes to get a veterinary medicine degree — a big deal when you’re talking about spending upward of $32,000 a year, Kirkpatrick said. Federal legislators have introduced several bills to help increase the number of farm animal vets, including the Veterinary Services Investment Act, which is aimed at recruitment, helping vets expand their practices and providing financial assistance for students. The bill passed the House in September and is awaiting approval in the Senate. The students who have chosen to work with large animals are committed to their choice. Elizabeth Adam, 26, of Santa Maria, Calif., earned a degree in English and business at Loyola Marymount University , and later worked as a consultant at a law firm — but really dreamed of being a farm doctor. “I was making good money but was miserable,” she said. Adam is now in her second year at Fresno State’s pre-vet program. “This is for me,” she said. “The outdoors and the late night emergency calls and the country — I’m ready for all of that.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

BERKELEY, California — Amid the uproar over the proposed mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York, a new Islamic college recently opened its doors in California with plans to educate a new generation of Muslim-American leaders. Founded by three prominent Islamic scholars, Zaytuna College in Berkeley is a small school with just five faculty members and 15 students in its inaugural freshman class. The school wants to become the first fully accredited Muslim academic institution in the United States. QURAN: Florida pastor steps back from plans to burn Muslim holy book Zaytuna College is opening at a time when fierce opposition to the proposed Islamic community center and mosque near the former World Trade Center has left many American Muslims feeling under siege. Many mosques are boosting security this week ahead of the Sept. 11 anniversary that some fear could bring trouble to Muslim communities. Zaytuna has generated little controversy in this famously liberal college town, but some conservatives question the founders’ motives. Frank Gaffney , president of the Center for Security Policy , a conservative think tank, accuses the school of seeking to indoctrinate students and spread Islam in America. “This is stealth jihad in the sense that it is about promoting in the United States incubators for sharia,” the religious law of Islam, said Gaffney, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. Zaytuna’s founders dismiss such criticism, saying it represents the views of a small minority of Americans who don’t understand Islam. “I think Zaytuna College over time can help contribute to a healthier understanding of Islam by removing ignorance,” said co-founder Zaid Shakir , an Air Force veteran and California native. The college is seeking to “prepare morally committed human beings that can go out and make a difference in the world as Muslims.” Zaytuna, which means “olive tree” in Arabic, offers an education that combines training in Arabic language and Islamic scholarship with courses in the humanities and social sciences. There have been other attempts to start Muslim colleges in the U.S., but those schools have closed or remained obscure. Students of all faiths are welcome at Zaytuna, but its first freshman class is made up of an ethnically diverse group of nine women and six men who are all Muslims. Most students wear head scarves or skull caps and participate in afternoon prayer. Zaytuna is housed in rented classrooms at the American Baptist Seminary of the West, just a few blocks from the University of California, Berkeley campus. “Religion is the main part of my life. I have religion and then everything else comes around that. So that was definitely the main reason I wanted to come to Zaytuna,” said Sumaya Mehai, 21, who spent two years at community college in Santa Barbara before enrolling at Zaytuna. The college is working toward earning accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, one of six regional accrediting associations in the U.S., a process that is expected to take four to eight years. The founders hope to build an institution that will train scholars, professionals and religious leaders to serve the country’s fast-growing Muslim population, which now numbers in the millions. With few Islamic seminaries or colleges in the U.S., many American mosques have brought in imams from countries including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which can lead to a disconnect between religious leaders and their congregations. The three founders of the school are all leading Islamic scholars. Hatem Bazian is a Palestinian-American who teaches Islamic studies at UC Berkeley. Shakir and Hamza Yusuf are American converts who spent years studying Islam overseas before becoming leading Muslim scholars in the U.S. Zaytuna, where tuition is $11,000 a year, offers a bachelor’s degree with two majors: Arabic language and Islamic law and theology. Students take classes in subjects such as Islamic ethics, Islamic finance and Muslims in America, as well as courses one finds at a traditional liberal arts college — sociology, philosophy, linguistics, astronomy. Zaytuna’s opening is “one of the signs that Muslims have come of age in this country” and will be “a unique contribution to higher education,” said Ebrahim Moosa , a professor of Islamic studies at Duke University . But Moosa said the bachelor’s degree curriculum seems more like that of a theological seminary than a liberal arts college because most of the required courses are related to Islam. “From where I’m sitting, it’s heading in the direction of becoming a theological seminary, unless there will be a radical rethinking of the program,” Moosa said. In the years to come, Zaytuna’s founders hope to enroll more students, add more majors, offer graduate programs and have its own campus. The school is raising money from Muslim communities in the U.S. and trying to build an endowment. Freshman Hadeel Al-Hadidi, 24, completed her bachelor’s degree in communications at the University of Michigan-Dearborn before enrolling at Zaytuna. She hopes to pursue a career in film. “Zaytuna College is more of a personal thing,” she said, “to make myself a better person, to better myself in my religion.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Cancer has ravaged several of Ann Aberson’s relatives, so she doesn’t have a problem with her two teenage daughters wearing bracelets to raise awareness of breast cancer. But their school principal does. This week, Baltic High School, just north of here, became one of the latest across the USA to ban the rubber bracelets that has a message some say is in poor taste: “I love boobies.” The bracelets have caused controversy in schools in states including California, Colorado, Idaho, Florida and Wisconsin. Some districts allow students to wear them inside-out, and others ban them. “When we had an assembly the first day of school, I basically told the students we are not insensitive to the cause,” Baltic High Principal Jim Aisenbrey says. “I think everybody in the gym, including myself, has had a family member or relative or friend who has dealt with the issue. I do think there are more proper ways to bring this plight to the attention of people, and I don’t think this is a proper way.” “I guess I never thought of them as offensive,” Aberson says. Her grandmother and five of her grandmother’s sisters battled breast cancer. The bracelets, which sell for about $4 in stores, were created by Keep A Breast Foundation, a Carlsbad, Calif., non-profit group that seeks to increase breast cancer awareness among young people. Proceeds from sales support the foundation’s programs, founder Shaney Jo Darden says. She says the bracelets are meant to spark discussions. “That’s the whole idea, it’s getting people to talk about breast cancer, it’s getting people to share their feelings about how this disease has impacted their life,” she says. “The bracelet is doing what it’s meant to do — it’s making people talk.” “Schools banning it? That’s crazy,” says Julie Hubbell of Lewisville, Texas. Hubbell helped organize an auction and barbeque named “Boobie Q” to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which fights breast cancer. In the Fresno, Calif., area, students in the Clovis Unified School District were told not to wear the bracelets in class — or to turn them inside out so the message is not visible, spokeswoman Kelly Avants says. The district’s dress code outlaws jewelry with sexually suggestive language or images, she says.

Jeremy Short’s students read comic books in class. Then they take exams, do well, and finish the semester with an understanding of the fundamentals of business management. In an effort to make dry content more interesting, Short co-wrote a set of two graphic novels, the second of which was released this summer. “Textbooks are just plain boring,” said Short, who is a professor of management at Texas Tech University . He said that standard business textbooks use a lot of disconnected examples and irrelevant stock photos, and he wanted to create something that would be “more like a movie,” that would get the necessary points across while keeping students engaged. Atlas Black: Managing to Succeed was his first attempt at a graphic-novel textbook; it covers, short Says, all the bases of what his students need to learn, while telling a story in panels about a college kid named Atlas and his friends. His adventures continue in Atlas Black: Management Guru? ON THE WEB: De-departmentalizing the business school MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: Bard brings finance into the fold Atlas is a bit of a slacker, but eventually graduates from college, learns to run a business, and becomes a fledgling entrepreneur. The graphic novel introduces concepts from principles of management, organizational behavior, strategic management, and entrepreneurship while illustrating Atlas’ quest to make money, get over a breakup, and open the No Cover Cafe, where college students can listen to free music and buy moderately priced pizza. To convey some of the important concepts, Atlas talks to his girlfriend about how he is doing better in school and applying a “balanced scorecard” (a strategic performance-management tool) to his life, and later in the book explores the options necessary for hiring employees and suppliers, and developing the best business model for his restaurant. When Atlas’s friend has trouble understanding motivation, Atlas takes him to his baseball coach, who uses straightforward examples from running a baseball team to illustrate complex ideas about motivation — a key concept in business. Atlas plays chess with his friend and they discuss the similarities: “In both chess and business you have to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty. You have to anticipate your opponents moves. You have to consider a lot of potential options that aren’t necessarily clear or perfect. In business and chess, you can take ‘old moves’ and put new twists on them.” The graphic-novel genre appeals to a young audience, Short said, and he wanted a medium that would be a more interesting and effective way to communicate with students, who live in an increasingly visually-oriented world. He’s used the books in his undergraduate and M.B.A. classes, and has received praise for the books from both types of students. Paul Barowsky, an M.B.A. student at Texas Tech who took a class with Short, said he liked the book and would prefer graphic novels to traditional textbooks in most courses (with the exception of numbers-intensive classes). “A story format forces the author to ‘net out’ his/her ideas in a concise, easily comprehensible dialogue compared to traditional textbooks, which tend to be repetitive and long-winded,” he said in an e-mail. Formal evaluations showed that 86% of his students that used the book said they agreed or strongly agreed that it “compares favorably” to other management textbooks they’ve had, Short said. He added that the most rewarding part of the process teaching with Atlas Black is having students wonder what happens in the story when the book ends. “The idea of a student asking what comes next in a textbook is really just unfathomable,” he said. Though the idea of teaching from a graphic novel may have its skeptics, the response to Short’s books has been overwhelmingly positive. “When I first told [my colleagues] that I was going to do a graphic-novel textbook, a lot of them gave me a sideways glance,” Short said. “But I haven’t heard anyone ever say that they look at the first chapter and say it’s a bad idea.” Likewise, professors at the University of Vermont School of Business “rolled their eyes” at the idea that E. Lauck Parke, an associate professor there, was incorporating such a nontraditional teaching tool into his course. Parke is nearing retirement, and said that many professors of his age are used to the straightforward black-and-white texts that they read in college. “You were lucky if you got a Wall Street Journal black-and-white sort of sketch or visual in a chapter,” he said. “So we’re sitting here having been taught in one methodology, and many of us haven’t gotten used to all the new literature about trying to understand the different ways in which a human learns.” Parke said Atlas Black provided a good skeleton for the concepts he taught in his course, and is considering using it again. “It’s not a typical graphic novel by any stretch of the imagination,” said Thomas Moliterno, assistant professor of management at the University of South Carolina. He incorporated Atlas Black into an undergraduate class, and said that he would use it again in future courses. “Textbooks tend to be imposing to students and expensive, and I think it’s a real challenge to find a textbook that students are willing to buy and/or read,” he said. In addition to telling a story with pictures and text bubbles as a traditional comic book would, Short’s book also has paragraphs of text on certain pages, which allows the author to create a richer discussion of content than a normal comic book would, Moliterno said. On the other hand, he noted that it’s difficult to skip around in the textbook because it follows a narrative arc, and confines the professor to framing a course entirely around the book. Dale Dunn, professor and chair of the pathology department at the Texas Tech School of Medicine is currently also in the M.B.A. program and took Short’s organizational behavior class, in which he read Atlas Black. He said that the graphic novel, as a genre, has yet to overcome a stigma of existing just for entertainment purposes, and it may be a challenge to get students to take it seriously. However, he said it certainly has a niche in education, and he has even been discussing the possibility with Short of creating a graphic-novel textbook for health care risk-management courses. “As you start reading it, you start thinking, ‘Can I take this seriously?’ But as you get involved you realize there’s more to it than just entertainment,” Dunn said. “There’s a lot of didactic information, and from my vantage point it was more memorable and unique because you could identify the information with specific characters.” This isn’t the first time comic books have been used to communicate educational concepts. Professors at the Duke Law School created a comic book to illustrate issues in copyright law, and the Federal Reserve published a series of comic books targeted at a younger audience to explain financial and economic issues. But creating an entire textbook is a unique project, Short said. “This is the first that really covers all the concepts and frameworks and that is age-appropriate,” he said. “I don’t know of any other thing that’s like this.” Big textbook publishers like McGraw-Hill do not have any textbooks in the graphic novel format, said a spokesman for the company. Atlas Black is published by Flat World Knowledge, and it is the first book of its type for the open-source textbook publisher, which Short chose because of its affordability. Students can order the book for $14.95, but it is expected to be free to read online by spring 2011. Jeff Shelstad, CEO of Flat World Knowledge, said the Atlas Black books are among the company’s more successful products, though it might be “a slow build” for Short because faculty are hesitant about change. Still, of the 1,300 faculty members using any of Flat World’s products this fall, about 25 will be assigning Atlas Black, he said. Short is currently at work on a third graphic novel — about franchising.

Many students dread public speaking and say they only sign up because the class is required. But in Sam Blank’s classroom, they find it isn’t so terrifying. “I’m a pretty well-liked person, considering the fact I teach a course that creates fear in people,” jokes Blank, 62, a communications professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York . Blank is among millions of educators who are praised, glorified — and sometimes verbally torn to shreds — on websites where students go to rate their professors. Luckily, he got a stellar rating: the No. 1 community college professor on the website RateMyProfessors.com . RateMyProfessors.com, known as RMP, is the front-runner among such sites, with about 1.9 million unique visitors a month, says comScore, which tracks Web traffic. Owned by MTV ‘s college network, mtvU, RMP lists more than 1 million professors from 6,500 schools in the USA, Canada and England . Other smaller such sites include KnowYourProfessor.com and ProfessorPerformance.com . On RMP, professors are rated on a five-point scale, for overall quality, helpfulness, clarity — and how easy it is to get an A in their class. Students also give chili peppers to professors they consider “hot.” Despite some harsh comments warning others away from professors some raters didn’t like, the website is about “shining a spotlight” on the best professors, mtvU’s Carlo DiMarco says. “College students always sought the advice of their peers, friends and family members” about which classes to take, he adds; online, they can seek advice from thousands of voices. Rodney Kashem recently bought RMP’s rival, ProfessorPerformance.com, and has revamped the site. Kashem, 24, a grad student at Dartmouth College, says it’s the same as checking hotel ratings before spending money on vacation; students are “customers” who want to make sure their tuition is well spent. Blank says he didn’t know about his top rating on RMP, but when a reporter told him, he said it was “absolutely wonderful. … Perhaps it’s an affirmation of my ability to teach.” Juann Watson, a psychology and mental health professor at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, N.Y., was rated the site’s “hottest” professor of the year. Watson, 44, says she’s honored to be recognized, but “a chili pepper means nothing at this stage in my life or in my accomplishments.” Ted Coladarci, director of institutional research at the University of Maine, has studied how closely RMP’s ratings align with the teacher evaluations students write at the end of courses, and he says there’s a strong correlation. His findings , with co-author Irv Kornfeld, were published in the journal Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation. But he cautions that students motivated to go online to rate a professor do not necessarily share the same opinions as everyone who took the class. “An instructor’s RMP ratings tend to derive from an exceedingly small and arguably biased sample of all students the instructor has had,” he says. Coladarci adds that some instructors receive less-than-stellar RMP ratings but nevertheless enjoy high ratings on their school’s official student evaluations of teaching. These cases, he says, “serve as an important cautionary note for RMP users. In short, it’s risky to form judgments about instructors and their courses based solely on what you see on RateMyProfessors.com.”

ATLANTA (AP) — Dave Ebersbach lost his job as a math teacher this summer, and he spends each day hoping that his poverty-stricken school in Ohio will call up and offer him his position back. He and thousands of other teachers around the country could get their jobs back now that the Senate has approved an emergency stimulus package designed to keep educators and other public employees out of the unemployment line. ANALYSIS: Teacher pension funds are short billions SURVEY: Self-evaluation better than parent, student evaluation, teachers say “My biggest thing is I want to go back to the school I was at for the students,” said Ebersbach, 43, one of 14 math teachers in the Toledo school district to receive notice a few weeks ago that their jobs were cut. “We’re in a high-poverty school and one thing the students need more than anything else is consistency. And they’re not going to get that.” The $26 billion measure passed Thursday is less than was initially proposed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan , but will provide $16 billion to help states balance their Medicaid budgets and $10 billion for grants to school districts to forestall layoffs. Republicans strenuously opposed the measure, denouncing it as yet another federal bailout the government cannot afford and calling it a giveaway to public employee unions. For educators across the country, it’s been a bewildering summer as money to save thousands of jobs stalled in Congress and unions and administrators sparred over ways to rehire laid-off teachers. The result has been what is referred to in education circles as the “yo-yo effect.” School budgets, facing severe reductions in state funding, are cut. Layoffs are made. And some or even all of the teachers are hired back over the summer as officials scramble for money. The money coming from Congress could help fill some of that void. But until districts actually have the money in hand, thousands of teachers must wait in limbo not knowing whether they’ll have jobs when school starts in a few weeks. Data provided by the U.S. Department of Education on how many jobs the bill is expected to fund reads like the medical chart of a battered patient: 16,500 in California. In Texas, 14,500. More than 9,000 in Florida. Some 161,000 education jobs across the country in all. “The Senate amendment will go a long way to protecting these jobs and ensuring that America’s educators are working to educate our way to a better economy,” Duncan said. “It’s the right thing to do for America’s students and America’s teachers.” Throughout the summer, many districts had despaired that Congress would deliver any money, and scrambled to find other ways to bring back the teachers, offering early-retirement incentives and negotiating furlough days. In Iowa, where 1,500 layoffs were announced earlier this year, the Des Moines district has called back all but 30 of the 173 teachers who were laid off. Twyla Woods, the district’s chief of staff, said they opened an early retirement option and hope to have enough attrition overall to bring back the remaining teachers. In Santa Cruz, Calif., 82 teachers were laid-off this spring and rehired again this summer, also largely due to a negotiated retirement incentive that 41 workers opted into. Teachers also agreed to take furlough days. The entry level salary in the district is $40,000. The efforts all saved jobs, but are not considered long-term solutions. In other districts, no solution was reached at all, leaving hundreds unemployed and hoping for federal money. Gretchen Marfisi in Florida was laid off in each of the last two summers, only to be rehired by the Broward County School District. This year she canceled her family vacation and put her life on hold before being called back Thursday. “Why are they firing all of us?” Marfisi said, her voice ringing with frustration. “Besides giving us all more gray hair and wrinkles, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of logic involved.” Marfisi is now preparing to unpack all her boxes of teaching materials once again. “It’s a relief to get a paycheck,” Marfisi said. “It’s just very weird and bizarre emotionally. It just in the process makes you feel like garbage.” Mike Langyel, president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, worries about the long-term effects these series of layoffs will have on the teaching career. “We don’t need to turn this into a Wal-Mart employment where you’re in for a while and you’re out,” Langyel said. Teachers say the effect on morale has been overwhelming. “Somebody said to me, ‘Teacher: I thought that was one field that was recession-proof,’” Ebersbach said. “I’m at a 50-50 shot.” Turner reported from Atlanta. Armario reported from Miami. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Teens with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are more likely to drop out of high school or delay completing high school than other kids, a new study has found. Researchers analyzed U.S. data and found that nearly one-third of students with the most common type of ADHD either drop out or delay high school graduation. That rate is twice that of students with no psychiatric disorder. “Most people think that the student who is acting out, who is lying and stealing, is most likely to drop out of school. But we found that students with the combined type of ADHD — the most common type — have a higher likelihood of dropping out than students with disciplinary problems,” study senior author Julie Schweitzer, an ADHD expert and associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Davis , said in a university news release. “This study shows that ADHD is a serious disorder that affects a child’s ability to be successful in school and subsequently in a way that can limit success in life,” she added. Developing methods to help students with ADHD graduate high school could have significant long-term societal benefits, according to Schweitzer. “If you don’t have your high school degree, you’re going to have less income. You can’t buy houses and cars. People who drop out of high school are more likely to be reliant on public assistance. This is a disorder that has serious long-term impacts on your ability to be successful and contribute to society, not just in school, but for the rest of your life,” she said. The researchers also found high drop-out rates among students with other mental health disorders. The rates were 26.6% for those with mood disorder, 24.9% for those with panic disorder, and up to about 20% for those with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, generalized anxiety disorder and social phobia. Smoking was also associated with a high risk of dropping out. The study found that 29% of students who smoked failed to complete high school on time, compared with 20% of those who used alcohol and 24.6% of those who used drugs. The study was published in the July online edition of the Journal of Psychiatric Research .

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Students graduating from high school this spring may be collecting their diplomas just in time, leaving institutions that are being badly weakened by the nation’s economic downturn. Across the country, mass layoffs of teachers, counselors and other staff members — caused in part by the drying up of federal stimulus dollars — are leading to larger classes and reductions in everything that is not a core subject, including music, art, clubs, sports and other after-school activities. VIDEO: More deep cuts looming for public schools VIDEO: Hard times for even richest districts Educators and others worry the cuts could lead to higher dropout rates and lower college attendance as students receive less guidance and become less engaged in school. They fear a generation of young people could be left behind. “It’s going to be harder for everybody to get an opportunity to get into college,” said Chelsea Braza, a 16-year-old sophomore at Silver Creek High School in San Jose . “People wouldn’t be as motivated to do anything in school because there’s no activities and there’s no involvement.” The library at Silver Creek High is open for only an hour a day. The career center is closed. There is no more summer school. And student athletes must pay $200 each. State budget cuts will make things even worse next year. The school will probably have five fewer classroom days and lose three of its four guidance counselors and three of its four custodians, as well as its health aide, mental health coordinator and student activities director. The future of student government, clubs, pep rallies, homecoming and prom is in doubt. The federal government’s $787 billion economic stimulus package saved an estimated 300,000 education jobs for this year, but many of those positions are once again in jeopardy as that money dries up. “Literally tens of millions of students will experience these budget cuts in one way or another,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan , who is urging Congress to provide another round of emergency funding for schools. “If we do not help avert this state and local budget crisis, we could impede reform and fail another generation of children.” Sen. Tom Harkin , D-Iowa, has introduced legislation that would create a $23 billion fund to help schools retain teachers, principals and other staff members. The fate of the bill is uncertain. The American Association of School Administrators estimates that 275,000 education jobs will be cut in the coming school year, based on an April survey. Other AASA surveys found that 52% of administrators plan to cut extracurricular activities, and 51% are reducing elective courses not required for graduation. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system in North Carolina, which cut $90 million last school year, plans to slice off an additional $78 million and eliminate more than 1,000 positions, including almost 650 teachers. The district will cut its middle school sports teams next year, and schools are cutting electives such as German and creative writing, Superintendent Peter Gorman said. “I’m very concerned when we can’t offer those courses which hook an individual student to pursue their passion, or what could be their life’s vocation,” Gorman said. In the Tupper Lake Central Schools in New York , the rural district in the Adirondacks will lose 25% of its instructional staff in the upcoming school year, which will probably result in bigger classes and the elimination of electives such as photography, modern art and ceramics, said Superintendent Seth McGowan. “It seriously compromises the depth of the education our students will be receiving,” he said. In Illinois, more than 20,000 jobs in schools — including an estimated 12,600 teachers and administrators — will be lost next school year, said Brent Clark, executive director of the Illinois Association of School Administrators. South Florida’s Broward County, the nation’s sixth-largest school district, could lay off 800 to 1,000 teachers because of a $130 million budget shortfall. Officials are trying to figure out how to save sports and electives, considering options like sharing an art teacher between schools. California’s relentless budget crisis is taking its toll on schools like Silver Creek High, part of San Jose’s East Side Union High School District, which is seeking to slash an additional 10% from its $200 million budget. Over the past two years, the district, which has 12 campuses and 25,000 students, has eliminated more than 450 full-time positions, including nearly 200 teachers and certified staff, said Assistant Superintendent Cathy Giammona. Class sizes have swelled to an average of 35 students, with more than 40 crammed into AP Calculus sections. And schools in the district won’t offer any courses unless they are fully enrolled, leading to cuts in electives such as photography, business, woodworking and Japanese. Silver Creek High senior Anthony Chavez, who credits his counselors with helping him win a scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley, said he worries that students won’t get the same opportunities with just one counselor for more than 2,400 students. “Through my four years here my counselors helped me with everything. I’m the first generation in my family to go to college,” he said. “I didn’t even know what SATs were.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Students graduating from high school this spring may be collecting their diplomas just in time, leaving institutions that are being badly weakened by the nation’s economic downturn. Across the country, mass layoffs of teachers, counselors and other staff members — caused in part by the drying up of federal stimulus dollars — are leading to larger classes and reductions in everything that is not a core subject, including music, art, clubs, sports and other after-school activities. VIDEO: More deep cuts looming for public schools VIDEO: Hard times for even richest districts Educators and others worry the cuts could lead to higher dropout rates and lower college attendance as students receive less guidance and become less engaged in school. They fear a generation of young people could be left behind. “It’s going to be harder for everybody to get an opportunity to get into college,” said Chelsea Braza, a 16-year-old sophomore at Silver Creek High School in San Jose . “People wouldn’t be as motivated to do anything in school because there’s no activities and there’s no involvement.” The library at Silver Creek High is open for only an hour a day. The career center is closed. There is no more summer school. And student athletes must pay $200 each. State budget cuts will make things even worse next year. The school will probably have five fewer classroom days and lose three of its four guidance counselors and three of its four custodians, as well as its health aide, mental health coordinator and student activities director. The future of student government, clubs, pep rallies, homecoming and prom is in doubt. The federal government’s $787 billion economic stimulus package saved an estimated 300,000 education jobs for this year, but many of those positions are once again in jeopardy as that money dries up. “Literally tens of millions of students will experience these budget cuts in one way or another,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan , who is urging Congress to provide another round of emergency funding for schools. “If we do not help avert this state and local budget crisis, we could impede reform and fail another generation of children.” Sen. Tom Harkin , D-Iowa, has introduced legislation that would create a $23 billion fund to help schools retain teachers, principals and other staff members. The fate of the bill is uncertain. The American Association of School Administrators estimates that 275,000 education jobs will be cut in the coming school year, based on an April survey. Other AASA surveys found that 52% of administrators plan to cut extracurricular activities, and 51% are reducing elective courses not required for graduation. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system in North Carolina, which cut $90 million last school year, plans to slice off an additional $78 million and eliminate more than 1,000 positions, including almost 650 teachers. The district will cut its middle school sports teams next year, and schools are cutting electives such as German and creative writing, Superintendent Peter Gorman said. “I’m very concerned when we can’t offer those courses which hook an individual student to pursue their passion, or what could be their life’s vocation,” Gorman said. In the Tupper Lake Central Schools in New York , the rural district in the Adirondacks will lose 25% of its instructional staff in the upcoming school year, which will probably result in bigger classes and the elimination of electives such as photography, modern art and ceramics, said Superintendent Seth McGowan. “It seriously compromises the depth of the education our students will be receiving,” he said. In Illinois, more than 20,000 jobs in schools — including an estimated 12,600 teachers and administrators — will be lost next school year, said Brent Clark, executive director of the Illinois Association of School Administrators. South Florida’s Broward County, the nation’s sixth-largest school district, could lay off 800 to 1,000 teachers because of a $130 million budget shortfall. Officials are trying to figure out how to save sports and electives, considering options like sharing an art teacher between schools. California’s relentless budget crisis is taking its toll on schools like Silver Creek High, part of San Jose’s East Side Union High School District, which is seeking to slash an additional 10% from its $200 million budget. Over the past two years, the district, which has 12 campuses and 25,000 students, has eliminated more than 450 full-time positions, including nearly 200 teachers and certified staff, said Assistant Superintendent Cathy Giammona. Class sizes have swelled to an average of 35 students, with more than 40 crammed into AP Calculus sections. And schools in the district won’t offer any courses unless they are fully enrolled, leading to cuts in electives such as photography, business, woodworking and Japanese. Silver Creek High senior Anthony Chavez, who credits his counselors with helping him win a scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley, said he worries that students won’t get the same opportunities with just one counselor for more than 2,400 students. “Through my four years here my counselors helped me with everything. I’m the first generation in my family to go to college,” he said. “I didn’t even know what SATs were.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.