The War on Education

Because I am a teacher and my children are obviously going to public school AND I want them to get a college education, it became necessary to attend a protest rally at the State Capitol in Phoenix last weekend.

I realize the economy is in the pooper, but the state wants to make major cuts (we're talking millions of dollars here!) on education throughout the state. I don't know what's going to happen to my job (you know the arts are always vulnerable) and all-day kindergarten might go "bye-bye", amongst other things. However, knowing that there are economical sacrifices to be made, I am tired of mismanagement of funds by both local, state, and federal government while in order to "save" money, they go after our children and our schools.

The picture above is the T-shirt I painted for Mikelle late late Saturday night in preparation for the rally. I was trying to watch Iron Man with Chris at the same time and water got spilled all over it, so the paint job kind of has an "airbrush" effect. Oh well. She was only going to wear it once anyway - unless there is another rally.

Christian's T-shirt was spared the water mess and here he is at the rally with his T:I don't want this entry to turn into some political tirade about how disgusted I am about how my state looks at education anyway. But to put it mildly, it sucks AND blows at the same time. So many clowns move here for the warm climate (which sucks too, by the way) and the trade off they get is a sucky and very selfish-minded educational system that is counter-productive and continues to shoot ourselves in the foot.

That said, I feel very fortunate about the education my children are receiving in the district in which we reside. For AZ being bottom of the nation's barrell in educational funding, they're receiving one of the best public educations possible. I feel very lucky in that regard. That is one "pro" to staying around here for a while before making our Wickenburg move. Our district is a good one. (No, I don't work for the same district. I won't go there! I'm keeping things as positive as I can!)

Also, at the rally, a camera guy asked me if I was a mom and a teacher (I answered "both"!) Turns out, he was representing our local PBS channel and I ended up on their "Horizon" news report about it two days later (hey, I like PBS, but let's face it: Maybe 10 people saw it!)

Here is the link to the webcast (below). Watch the whole segment if you're interested but Christian shows up around 4:09 of the segment (you can scoot it over to there) and then there's Mikelle and I. Gosh, I know I did my make-up, but you can't tell on TV. Bleh. A little bit of lipstick and less of a beachball face would have been nice.

But as usual, I digress. I'm glad for the Horizon segment gets into opinions and point of views that I didn't share on here in effort to keep things light and "fluffy". You can probably tell what side of the coin I'm on with the opinions on there.

Linkie:
Tuesday January 27th "Horizon"