Vote no on amendment 8

Look there are problems with the class size amendment. Electives, exempt from the amendment are going to become dumping grounds and holding pens for kids. Special education classes, which traditionally have been small, will see their numbers rise too. Despite these two glaring over sites I think it’s time we stopped letting the state off the hook and began to fund education properly.

The Times Union who has never met a teacher whose opinion they like had a different more reasonable take on why we should vote for it and that is it is going to cost money and it is. This is different from the powers-that-be, whom in a completely lack of genuineness have long acted like they were suddenly doing the state a favor by trying to roll back the class size amendment, they say in order to give school districts more flexibility. To bad they didn’t think about that when they were doubling the homestead exemption, allowing owners of multiple houses and snowbirds take advantage of it and dozens of other breaks to special interests. This isn’t a favor to districts it’s the desire to continue to do favors for special interests that suddenly has the state in a panic to roll back the class size amendment.

Though it’s right about there that the Times Union starts to be disingenuous. In the last eight years despite glaring problems during the same time the class size amendment began to be phased in, the state of Florida saw tremendous learning gains, and what the Times Union sees as reasonable many of the citizens of Florida, parents teachers, and children see as giving the state one more opportunity to shirk it's responsibility to provide a first class education to the children if Florida. Furthermore for every Harvard story (way to cherry pick a study Times Union) I can show you ten that say smaller classes lead to increased learning.

There are indeed problems with the class size amendment but there are even more problems with amendment 8 and chief is it was written by people who don’t really care about education or the states children.

Don’t let them off the hook, insist the state takes education seriously, and insist they tell our children that they are important