Republican budget to bring state, teacher layoffs (Iowa)

http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2004/03/12/news/regional/43cf8d61ec90b34786256e55001d9cc4.txt

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Republican legislative leaders said Thursday they will release budget plans early next week that include no tax increases and will likely result in state employee and teacher layoffs.

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The Legislature's school funding bill vetoed by Gov. Tom Vilsack included a $65 million increase in basic funding and $44 million to replace across-the-board cuts made last year, putting total school spending in 2005 at $1.9 billion.

Vilsack, a Democrat, said it wasn't enough money and Republican lawmakers refused to work on negotiating an alternative funding bill.

With the veto, the law allows for an automatic increase in basic school funding of $47.1 million and automatically restores last year's budget cuts at $45.4 million, if no additional action is taken.

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Democratic lawmakers were critical of Republicans for developing budget figures without input and said they were concerned about deep cuts or heavy use of cash reserves and one-time sources such as the Senior Living Trust Fund.

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we're faced with a 1.5 million cut to our budget of 33 million. We've already cut everything we can think of, including central ad, paras, cocurricular - the only thing to do now is raise our class size back up again. We had lowered to 20:1 at elementary; 23:1 at middle and 24:1 at high school, but we can't afford it anymore. Add another 15 teachers to Bush's job's hit list.

They just keep electing Republicans. Who gives a damn if our educational system is falling apart? It's not just primary education either. State colleges are being forced to raise tuition by $1000/year.

I hope everyone enjoys that extra $2-3 they saved in tax cuts the pukies gave them a few years ago. This is how it's being paid for.