I don’t get it, will somebody please explain it to me. Jacksonville’s schools, which mean Jacksonville’s children, are facing 96 million dollars in cuts, yet I don’t see any public outrage. There is no clamoring in the streets and no shouts that something has to be done. All people seem to muster is a barely audible sigh and a shrug of their shoulders. Don’t people know how catastrophic a 96 million dollar shortfall will be or is it they just don’t care.
The district will be expected to provide the same services it did this year with 96 million less dollars, and this as prices have risen and things have gotten more expensive and the legislature has burdened the district with one unfunded mandate after another. Could you do the same with considerably less money? Well the legislature, the city council and by extension us through our inaction think its okay that our schools and our children do. I hope people’s sitting around on their hands isn’t because they think that this is just a canceling of additional monies as often budgets increase as costs do, because it’s not, it’s a reduction from the amount of money our schools and our children received this year, which was already less than the amount of money we received last year.
Let me describe to you what 96 million dollars in cuts is going to look like, and please don’t think I exaggerate for dramatic effect. Dozens if not hundreds of teachers and support staff will lose their jobs. Those that remain will have their raises canceled and benefits reduced. Programs like art, music, physical education and many other electives will be eliminated as will field trips, extracurricular activities, most supplies, teacher training and after school programs. Services for the disabled will be curtailed and social work, librarian and nursing positions will be cut. These are some of the changes your children and the district are facing if nothing is done.
In effect education in Jacksonville will become fewer already over worked teachers doing more for less without supplies servicing more kids who will have fewer options. Is that the future you want for our schools and our children, don’t they deserve better. This friends is a recipe for disaster.
Which brings me back to the part I don’t get, shouldn’t people specifically parents be outraged by the prospect of this? Why aren’t they in mass writing letters or calling their elected officials, why aren’t they filling to the brim the school board and city council meetings demanding something be done or asking how they can help? I know these are tough times for a lot of people but what’s more important than our children? I ask you again, what is more important than our children; perhaps just one thing, football.
Every Friday night in the fall thousands of local children will suit up and play the game of football, they will be watched by tens of thousands of fans and coached by hundreds of teacher/coaches and these games all will cost the district money and when you include all the other sports, the costs are in the millions; millions of dollars that could be used to fund needed reading and after school programs, to save teachers jobs and a whole host of other things that will have to be cut if we stand idly by and nothing is done.
I played sports while in high school and I believe they have been and can be very important to the development of many children. As for me they kept me off the streets and gave me a purpose, I felt like a member of my community when I played and they taught me about things like discipline and team work. Furthermore I developed a work ethic by playing sports as I knew if I wanted to be successful I needed to work hard to do so, and I with all sincerity say cancel them all, cancel every single one of them if it saves one art teacher or one music teacher their job or if it allows a group of third graders to have PE. once a week.
I urge the superintendant and the school board to let the citizens and parents of Jacksonville know that before one teacher looses their job, before we assign one class to have more than forty students, or before we get rid of any art, music or physical education program we will get rid of all extracurricular sports including football.
This would be an unpopular decision, but leaders often need the courage not to just do the popular thing but to do the right thing as well. Before jobs are lost and necessary academic programs are impacted, extracurricular activities should be cut, because even though they are important and do serve a function in the end they are extra, it’s right there in the word.
Nobody wants to see this happen but the school board, Jacksonville’s teachers and students need the parents and citizens of Jacksonville to understand there is a pending disaster on the horizon; that parents have to get involved before we are forced to endure the impending financial crisis. We need them to let the legislature know it’s not all right that they continue to slash the education budget and set our children and schools back. We likewise need parents to let the city council know we want them to pass similar measures to the ones that have been passed in south Florida and other places that invest in our children. We need parents to do it because neither the legislature nor the city council is listening to the people on the front lines and in the trenches of education and that’s the teachers.
The fact that Florida is 50 out of 50 in per pupil spending and the legislature expects to make more cuts should indicate to all of us that they don’t care about students, but I have to believe the parents and citizens of Jacksonville do, they just don’t know how bad it will be. I have to believe that because the thought that they do know but just don’t care is too terrible to contemplate.
Again I don’t get why more isn’t being done, but it’s time the citizens of Jacksonville got it and realized how dire the situation is and realized that things are only going to get fixed if they stand up and demand that the powers that be do something, that cuts an inaction will no longer be tolerated. If they don’t then we all may lose something that is very important. They say in the south football is king, well if local parents and citizens don’t do something it may just become a memory on Friday nights in Jacksonville.
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