2004-03-09 10:26 p.m.
Reading Is Not So Fundamental
TheBoy and I were waiting in line at the casual carpool, trying to smoke out one of those elusive post-8:30 AM carpoolers so we'd have our requisite 3 people in the carpool lane. The carpoolers were even thinner on the ground than usual, so we sat and listened to the news while we waited. NPR had a revolting paean to Ralph Nader ("Is this real or a joke?" TheBoy demanded as I wrinkled my nose and tried to imagine writing mash notes to Nader as a 4th grader, as the woman in this piece had apparently done) so we flipped over to the All News All The Time station.
One of the local measures on El Suburb's ballot in this last election was a $75/year parcel tax to benefit the schools. The district El Suburb's schools are in seems to have been mismanaged, though without the entertainment value and psychotic drama of the Oakland school board. But the schools need money and the tax was pretty trivial, so I voted for it. However, the tax didn't get the 2/3 majority it needed to pass.
Today the district announced the $16.5 million in cuts it would need to make since the parcel tax didn't pass. The All News All The Time story said that the district would be cutting the sports programs at the high schools. This would be the first district in California to do so. They then ran 2-3 minutes of comments from the Giants' rookie of the moment, who attended one of the schools, and at the end of the story mentioned that, oh yeah, they'd also be closing all the district libraries and firing a bunch of people.
Hello!? God knows I love baseball, but could we please have some priorities here?
The libraries aren't the only non-sports thing being cut. 10% of all staff will be laid off. Guidance counseling? Forget about it. Music programs in the elementary schools? Gone. But do the cuts to the sports programs really deserve 2 minutes and 55 seconds of a 3-minute report? Where are the people rallying to raise money for the libraries? Why aren't people being quoted in the press about how an education requires such silly things as books? Since when did learning how to research and reading books that are not directly assigned in class become a frill?
No wonder so many East Bay parents send their kids to private school. There's only so far you can go to support public education.