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Asheville area folks rally against education cuts

Post on June 9, 2009 by 1 Comment »

Around 1,000 community members, parents and teachers showed up at the Enka District PTA Rally for Public Education Monday evening in Enka High School's gymnasium. Various speakers including representatives, parents and school board members expressed concern about the state budget cuts to education.The Asheville Citizen-Times reports that hundreds of people rallied in nearby Candler last night to protest proposed budget cuts in education. This is great news. We need for this kind of thing to start happening everwhere around the state.

Speakers also “urged the state’s elected officials to consider raising taxes instead of increasing class size and laying off teachers.” Another bullseye.

The only slightly slightly “off” note was this, no doubt well-intended, soundbite:

“We would rather have educated, successful students coming from our classrooms than flowers on our exit ramps,” said Seena Dill, PTO president of Sand Hill-Venable Elementary….

While the sentiment is laudable, the reality is that eliminating all of the state’s roadside flowers wouldn’t buy more than a small handful of teachers.

We can talk all we want about curbing non-esssential spending in state government (and there certainly is some to be curbed), but when you get down to it, most of the big money is in paying for basic services that simply can’t be eliminated without enormous suffering.

Possibly related posts:

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  2. More than 2,700 N.C. educators lost jobs, DPI finds (with Top 10 list of hardest-hit counties)
  3. Rep. Bill Owens “surprised” state budget he voted for meant teaching cuts in his district
  4. Education cuts, higher tuition draw ire at Tillis town hall (video)
  5. Holocaust education program threatened by state budget cuts

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Comments (Closed):1

  1. David Heim
    June 12, 2009 at 10:07 am

    June 10th, 2009

    North Carolina Legislature
    The Capital
    Raleigh, North Carolina

    Dear Sir or Madam,

    I write in support of continued funding for education and therapies for children with disabilities. We understand that this funding is being considered for elimination within the upcoming budget.

    We have a nine year old son that is diagnosed with Autism, the therapies and specialized education offered and provided by Western North Carolina Public schools have proven totally effective in the vast improvement in my son’s condition.

    Please, let’s look at the long term. Do we want to spend now to improve these children to the point where they become tax paying, productive citizens of North Carolina or pay later, for if we do nothing to help them now, they will become a burden on all citizens of the state for the rest of their lives. The choice is very simple.

    There is another element of this issue that we would request that you, and your colleagues look into: This generation of children were poisoned with an additive in the immunization shots called therminsal, which is Mercury. My son has gone through the slow, expensive process of Chelation and continue on a specialized diet and today, because of the teachers and therapists, that are in the crossfire of budgets cuts, are slowly curing my son of a supposed incurable disease. The drug companies will trot out a slick “talking head” to pooh-pooh this fact.

    I urge you, and your colleagues to visit, on behalf of the citizens you represent, a website called, http://www.generationrescue.org which will detail all I have written and will clarify the immediate need for the therapies and specialized education that will turn these children from expensive wards of the state into productive, taxpaying citizens.
    Sincerely,

    David & Juliette Heim