Awash in hypocrisy over local schools
Overcome with crocodile tears, State Rep. Charles Perry of Lubbock, a tea partytype who voted last year to cut $5.4 billion from the public education budget, is quoted in the article linked below about the need to encourage more people to become teachers. According to the article, the number of teachers in Lubbock ISD, which Perry purports to represent, has decreased by almost 100 over the past two years while the number of students in the district has increased by 500.
Perry’s hypocrisy is very transparent. He and rightwing ideologues like him are a major reason schools are losing teachers. Statewide, almost 11,000 teaching jobs have been lost since Perry and his buddies slashed the public school budget. But with reelection time upon him, Perry is trying to make nice with the teachers he spent his time in Austin last year attacking.
The article, unfortunately, gives Perry a free ride, since it doesn’t say anything about his budget vote or the fact that the budget he supported was so bad it didn’t cover enrollment growth. And, today, he was scheduled to join Gov. Rick Perry and sign the governor’s antitax, antigovernment “Texas Budget Compact,” which would result in even deeper cuts in the public schools and the teaching ranks.
“This next session (in 2013) is going to be a better session,” Rep. Perry says.
It will be a better session if Charles Perry and a lot of backwardthinking legislators like him aren’t there. Teachers and other West Texas voters in Texas House District 83 have an opportunity in the May 29 Republican primary to improve the lot of their local schools. They need to vote against Perry and send Delwin Jones back to Austin. Jones truly values public schools and knows that they require more than hollow rhetoric.
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