S.O.S.

Today I found a red piece of paper in my daughter's backpack.  It was titled "S.O.S: Save Our Support Staff Campaign", and it said very plainly that "due to the state budget cuts reducing funding for our public education" all of our support staff AND the school librarian will no longer have jobs next year.  The red paper proposed that we do a fundraising campaign to raise $18k to hire two TAs for 4 hours a day.  These two TAs would then help with recesses, library work, and teacher support. 

I know that our school - and our school district, for that matter - is fairing far better than most schools across the country.  We actually still had TAs while many districts had gotten rid of them some time ago.  I'm still not okay with it, though.

Here's my question for the day: WHY does our government cut vital things like public education, fire/police services, etc. instead of cutting the CRAP out of other areas of our budget? I'm not a politician.  I don't know much about public policy.  My logical brain, though, tells me that there have to be PLENTY of other areas we could make cutbacks in order to come up with a mere $18k.  Heck, I bet some cutbacks could even garner twice that much.

But that won't happen.  Someone somewhere is getting a nice little kickback or getting some obscure research project funded while other people are losing their jobs. Children will have less attention from their teachers, and the student/teacher ratio will go up.  Classroom education will suffer. 

I'm going to help raise funds, AND I'm going to volunteer in my daughter's classroom to help offset the burden.  At this point, that's all I can do.