We're Bailing Out Car Makers While We Abandon Our Children

I guess I don't get it. I don't understand how the government can be bailing out the auto industry when, here in Maine anyway, we are looking at an unprecedented $26 million cut in education in the middle of the school year. When the auto company CEOs are making $400,000 a year, and a fraction of that is being cut from a statewide school budget that is likely to deeply affect our children's education. When these same CEOs show up to testify to Congress, asking for billions (nor millions) of dollars in free money, and they show up having flown to Washington in their individual corporate jets. Isn't that like driving a limousine to a food cupboard?

Here in Maine, our governor has ordered $26,000,000 in cuts, not for next year, but in the middle of the year, well after school supplies have already been ordered, when schools are trying to figure out how they are going to pay the winter fuel bills. This is money that has already been promised to the schools that the schools have built their budgets around. What are the schools going to do? My school district is giving pink slips to all the education technicians, anticipating that some or all of them may lose their jobs somewhere around Christmas. (Happy Holidays and don't let the door hit you in the butt as you leave for good.) My wife's school is looking at having 30 to 35 kids per classroom for next year. In my school, we are already cut back to the point where we can only offer our students English/Language Arts classes every other day. Are we going to have to do that with Math, too? We have cut our reading instruction from last year to this year by two thirds, from 350 minutes a week to 110 minutes a week. And now we hear that there may be more cuts. Maybe the kids can get by with 30 minutes of reading instruction a week and English every third day. Maybe we can cut Math out completely. I've always heard its over-rated anyway.

But, we better make sure we bail out the auto industry. Some of those executives might not get their Christmas bonuses. Isn't this the same industry that was told to produce more fuel efficient vehicles a few years ago? And they refused? They said people wanted the big SUVs and Hummers. Now, which vehicles are sitting on the lots rusting before they have ever been driven?

But lets cut all those ed techs from the schools. What do they do all day, anyway? They only work with our toughest students: the kids who can't read, the kids who kick and bite and punch, the kids who didn't get any supper the night before because mom was passed out drunk and dad hasn't been seen since last January, the kids who swear at them all the time, the kids who aren't toilet trained. Who is going to work with them? The principals? The superintendents? Maybe the school board would volunteer to come in every day at lunchtime to catheterize that student that used to be catheterized by the ed tech? Lets get rid of some of our most important staff members, the ed techs, and see what sort of school we have left.

I'm not blaming the superintendent. His hands are tied. To have cuts in the middle of the year is an impossible situation. There is very little supply money left to cut. The teachers have signed a year-long contract, there are legal issues if they are let go in the middle of the year. That leaves the hourly employees. I understand his dilemma.

One solution: take one tenth of one percent of the money that may be going to bail out the auto industry and send it our way, toward Maine, toward education, and we might be able to keep our already cut to the bare bones schools going for a little while longer.