You asked for cheap schools: Happy now?

Mike Thomas
COMMENTARY
May 29, 2008

Don´t blame the Orange County School Board for swapping middle-school and high-school start times.

Blame the politicians in Tallahassee and, while you´re at it, blame yourself. You are getting exactly what you voted for and what you are paying for: bare-bones schools.

You want government living within its means during these hard times? You got it. You want a baby-sitting service? Go find it elsewhere.

Did you think Orange schools could simply whack $70 million out of the budget with no impact?

This isn´t Washington, where George Bush can fight two wars, open the floodgates on domestic spending, slash taxes and just pass on the debt to our kids.

No, here in Florida the government must balance its books.

The Florida Legislature had two options for doing so when it met this year.

It could have slashed budgets, or it could have stopped shielding special-interest groups from paying taxes. It opted for the former.

So schools took a big hit.

Tax cuts only made matters worse.

How many of you voted for Amendment 1, which will drain school budgets more?

How many of you actually believed Charlie Crist when he promised to increase school funding if Amendment 1 passed?

How many of you sent an e-mail to a legislator protesting education cuts?

The decision to swap school schedules is the result of apathy, deceit and decisions that go back many months.

But nobody was paying attention back then. Most people just sat back in blissful ignorance, assuming that whatever happened in Tallahassee, someone else would take the hit.

What the School Board did was break the rules. It dared inconvenience more-affluent voters, the ones who seek revenge at the polls.

So while the governor basks in the glow of vice-presidential rumors, and Rep. Dean Cannon prepares for his glory days as speaker of the House, members of the Orange County School Board will be targeted for doing their dirty work.

Get a clue, people.

Where was your outrage this year when the school district said it would have to terminate 585 teaching positions? Or that it would cut summer-school programs, middle-school athletics, and art and environmental programs?

Where was the outrage when cuts were hitting the classroom?

The first job of schools is to educate kids.

Everything else is mission creep.

It´s not the schools´ responsibility to keep kids until a time that is convenient for parents. It´s not their job to accommodate football practice, hang time with buddies, extracurricular activities or after-school jobs.

Even before this fiscal meltdown, Florida schools operated on a shoestring. In every funding category, be it per-student spending, teacher salaries, education spending as a percentage of personal income or even university spending, we dwell in the national cellar. What is left to cut?

If there is one benefit from all this, it is that some students have been motivated to take action.

I´m not talking about the silly children who spout anonymous obscenities on message boards, but the ones who actually delved into the school budget looking for other ways to cut the $6 million this would save next year in busing costs.

Maybe the Orange County mayor of 2040 was born in all this. In the meantime, the kids are getting what their parents are paying for:

Cheap schools.

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