Dear State Decision Makers

Thank you State Decision Makers for cutting our school funding - for deciding not to pay out money that is owed to our district (and others) - for causing our schools to require to look at new "excting" options for how we teach our kids - for continuing to funnel funding into important things like professional athletic stadiums that will help our cities to thrive while the children living there and going to schools that are inept and sucky do anything but thrive.

Just the other day our districts superintendent proposed a few ideas for how to manage with less money:
1) Cut all after school sports programs
2) Close 2 schools
3) Fire over 100 teachers
4) Fire even more teacher aides
5) Increase class sizes to 30 kids per (without an aide)
6) Go to 3 Tier bussing (I don't mind this one)
7) Introduce Magnets into our school to draw back the private kids (don't know how this will work as we are an 80% white school - but maybe they will change the rules about 60/40).
8) Reduce the school day by an hour for the high school students
9) Have the PTO's become responsible for the school field trips (this is a personal NOT favorite of mine as our district is divided into the "haves" and "have nots" - schools on the north side have 100,000+ PTO budgets and 4% poverty - schools on the south side have about $20,000 budgets (if lucky) and a 60% poverty rate - how will those field trip experiences differ??).
10) Cut certain supplies used by teachers to reduce spending
11) Cut PE in the schools (we currently have PE everyday)

Those are just a few. Does the superintendant want to do this because it is genious? No. These ideas are being proposed out of necessity. Is our school district alone in making these hard choices? No. Schools all over the state - heck - all over the NATION are having to make these choices. We are probably even a "lucky" district in the large scheme of things.

Should parents be paying REALLY CLOSE ATTENTION and starting to raise a STINK? Yes! Are they going to? Probably not until it is too late is my guess. They will hear tell of all these "ideas" and "suggestions" and do nothing.............until these plans become reality - then they will start by screaming and complaining to the district superintendant the the school board (might be a good time to resign from school boards now) and find that the people in those positions are right there with them!

What we need to be doing is Paying Attention!! Doing something as the decisions are being made!! Stepping up and realizing that we are part of the problem!! How? Well by letting it happen without trying to make changes. Or seeing the changes - then switch to a private or a charter thinking it is better - not realizing (some will realize how funding works - but most thing charters just get money magically) that those charters are going to take even MORE funding from the public schools. Add in that there is less money from the state and there is even less money for the kid still in the public school.

Imagine what might happen if we all paid attention NOW - and we all worked together to make change in our schools - TOGETHER (being the key word) - how about we spend a few hours less shuttling our kids to crazy hours of after school activities that we are paying out the nose for because they "have to have them to be well rounded people when they get older" (which is bs - these afterschool programs are a keeping up with the Jones's peer pressure thing) - and spend a few MORE hours working on keeping our public school together?

Who is with me?