budget cuts

 The new budget took effect last September which included a 5.4 Billion school funding cut, billion dollars. At first I was almost hoping I had misread and that the 5.4 billion was the whole budget cut but nope, 5.4 billion dollars was cut from the already not so great Texas school system. Money that teachers, students and their parents could greatly benefit from. Classes are having to make room for more students and get by with fewer teachers. Some school are now charging for bus rides and students now help keep the school clean by sweeping classrooms and other little tasks. It has already begun to take a toll on the teachers, parents and kids in Texas.

 While I don't mind that kids are learning to keep their environment tidy, I think it's outrageous for Texans to allow a budget like this to go through when it effects so many people in a negative way, and the long term consequences of this action are almost scary to think about.

This budget cut surely stresses out teachers even more than they probably already were. Classes with at least 25 students will make it even harder for teachers to help every single one of the students and forces them to fall back on a “one size fits all” teaching style. The budget cut especially makes being a K-12 teacher seem very undesirable, since Texas doesn't compensate their teachers appropriately and having them in charge of so many students without proper materials and low pay doesn't sound like the best situation to put yourself in.

 Charging parents a fee for their children should ride the bus is a little ridiculous. I thought the whole point of the school bus was to help parents or guardians that are busy working or unable to bring their children to school. I don't believe that we should be charging them for something that is state mandated for the children they look after.

 Adding more kids to already overcrowded classrooms is a horrible idea, especially for children who need that extra attention from their teachers who are already spread thin. I speak for those kids myself when I say that crowded classrooms plus one teacher was more of a time to talk and listen to other kids talk and goof off rather than learn anything from the teacher. The kids who do need more help but aren't able to get it, yet are expected to pass a standardized test along with all their other classmates will get into a cycle of failing and trying to catch up that is seriously hard to get out of. The cliché that “children are our future” may be overused, but it is undoubtedly true and the truth is we should be doing everything we can to make sure students have every resource they need to not only learn but want to learn and excel at it.

I really think the Texas government should be doing all they can to ensure that every kind of student is able to have quality education and teachers are compensated for their time and they are given the tools they need to do their jobs. With this huge budget cut that seems highly unlikely.

second look

 In Christina Valdez's post titled “Why Not Give it a Second Look?” I find that the most important people in the situation were ignored. The main focus should be on the women in this situation who are doing the choosing, yes choosing, for themselves to go through the procedure. I think it's very arrogant and condescending to make them “rethink” their decision. As if they probably didn't put much thought into it, but the second time around they will suddenly come to their senses and give in to public pressure.

 The woman who makes the decision, is a living, breathing, thinking human being. In my opinion the fetus does not have the same rights as the person carrying it. If there is an argument about the life form growing inside a person, the person should be the one to decide what is best for them without government interference.

 In her argument and in other pro-sonogram bill arguments I've seen is that they somehow seem to think that women with an unwanted pregnancy quickly, with no hesitation come to the conclusion of having an abortion. They don't think that women have already thought about the consequences, and thought about what it would be like if they decided to keep the baby, or adopt.

 Her argument that we could be saving a future technological genius is not really an argument for life as much as it is an appeal to American's materialism and our sympathies. There's no arguing that Steve Jobs was a brilliant man but there are millions of other brilliant people, if he wasn't around someone else would have been around, and we would be consuming what they produced. That's why we should be focusing on the lives that are here, in the present in this certain situation.

 If we begin to let legislation begin to try and deter us away from making our own choices, how long will it take for them to make even more radical legislation. The question “Why not give it a second look?” is unthoughtful and rude, to me the question should be“Why not leave people to choose what they want”?