It’s the right thing
Annette Ratzlaff, Hartford
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Sadly, School District 252, Hartford, Olpe and Neosho Rapids, will lose a school this year. This is due to the massive statewide budget cuts.
The impact of any one of these schools closing will be devastating to the communities and parents alike. But the children who are uprooted and moved to unfamiliar surroundings will suffer the most in this transition.
Our school officials, wisely so, have followed suit of other school districts that are suffering the same loss of funds and have chosen to take a 3 percent pay cut. A good gesture of solidarity on their part. Which brings me to wonder why Gov. Mark Parkinson in his State of the State address two weeks ago didn’t demand a pay reduction and pay freeze for the next seven years from our elected officials in Topeka and Washington.
If our schools and countless other agencies have suffered great losses in funding, closing and job loss, one would think that it would be a great opportunity for those elected to rally around the flag and show the constituents that voted for them that they, too, will be willing to work for less. Seems to me that would be the right thing to do.
Annette Ratzlaff
Hartford
Comments
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bloomsbury (SC DIXON) says...
My school was closed in 3rd grade, I was “uprooted” and bused to a much bigger school and, yes, it was a trauma. By 8th grade that school closed too. On to a bigger school and a bigger trauma.
That was over 30 years ago.
I survived. The communities with the closed schools did not. Actually, one is still there but nothing but a ghost of its former self. Grocery stores close, gas stations close, various and sundry business will dry up. In the end it will hurt the towns much worse than it will hurt the kids.
This has been happening for 50 years or more all over the Midwest, in fact, the whole nation.
There is a Buddhist saying, “What cannot be changed must be endured.”
January 26, 2010 at 2:07 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
goodoleboy (anonymous) says...
One question I have that I have not heard asked or even answered from those that I have spoken with. When things pick up(which they will in time) will things go back to how they were?
January 26, 2010 at 3:16 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )