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Corbett makes "jobs, jobs, jobs" disappear

And jobs are what it's all about.

-- Gov. Tom Corbett, March 8, 2011.

In a pre-School Reform Commission budget briefing, Philadelphia School District Chief Financial Officer Michael Masch said that to close a $629 million budget gap, the district must lose about 16 percent of its workforce - 3,820 jobs.  That includes a reduction of 1,260 teaching jobs, or about 12 percent of the teaching force. The district says there will be a loss of 650 noontime aides, nearly 400 custodians, more than 180 counselors and 51 nurses would also face job loss.  Still, it's not yet clear how many layoffs that will mean, because an early retirement offer has been made to employees, and we don't know how many folks will take advantage of that.

-- Philadelphia Inquirer, April 27, 2011.

Look, clearly the Philadelphia School District had huge problems before the Naked Guv arrived in Harrisburg in Janiary (regular readers know what a big fan I am of Superintedent Arlene Ackerman's management style) but their troubles are now exponentially worse because of Corbett's austerity plan which not only does not create a single job (unless you count this one) but instead KILLS thousands of them. Soon you'll be seeing layoffs at school districts -- not to mention universities -- that aren't as badly managed as Philadelphia, and all these laid-off folks will not be buying things, which will cause more folks to be laid off, which eventually leads to a double-dip recession. Great strategy.

They can't even get work cleaning up the environmental disasters created by Corbett's billionaire fracking buddies. Those jobs are based in Texas.