Cutting Your Way to...

I think it is, at once, hilarious and quite tragic that people who think cutting school budgets is the panacea for 'curing the ills' or that such action is 'school reform.'  Those individuals are darn glad their taxes aren't going up (duh, 100% of us would be happy if that didn't happen!).   Of course, what they fail to realize is the other side of the equation, you know, 'to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.'

Cut budgets and you end up, in many cases, with the elimination or harm done to after school programs.  By the way, all the decent research on after school programs indicates that they provide multiple benefits.  Yep, it's called 'penny wise and pound foolish.'

Austerity folks say that it is time 'to cut the frills.'  Are you telling me cutting back on nurses or band programs are frills?  No, they aren't!  Building improvements and renovations...those aren't frills, they have to take place on an on-going basis.

Here's another...increasing class sizes.  The austerity crackpots feel that money can be saved by trimming some staff.  Instead of 25 in a class, why not 30 or 32 students.  After all, how could it be any harder to have an additional number of students?  It is plenty harder since teachers often have more papers to grade, invariably end up with some additional Education Services students, and have to have adjustments to their lessons with the added students.

Cutting school budgets may temporarily save some dollars only to result in greater harm in the long run.

Dick