Have you ever felt so buried in stress you thought you were going to explode? If you are a fellow college student, I’m sure you’ve had the feeling. This is how I imagine Erie School District feels right now. It might be a little extreme to compare college stress to Erie’s failing school system, but hey, I have to start somewhere.
Many people were in shock last spring when Erie school superintendent, Jay Badams, suggested the possibility of shutting down all of Erie’s schools and busing students to nearby districts to get an education. My siblings all currently attend Erie schools, so like many I was in shock! I am currently a secondary education major, and as a future teacher it makes me upset that all over the country schools are falling apart. It is easy to blame the city of Erie, Jay Badams, Obama, or basically anyone available for the Erie school district’s struggles. However, when you dive a little deeper it becomes clear that this is no single group or person’s fault, it is a much more complicated matter.
This whole situation started with a budget, something that my parents and boyfriend always seem to be bugging me about. Budgets run the government, big and small. Budgets are a big deal in the current election and hold equal importance even in the smallest of governing bodies. It was a huge deal when the district realized they were facing a $10.3 million dollar deficit for the 2016-17 school year. Yes, you read that number correctly. This put the school district in a bit of a conundrum. The district was able to cut down the deficit to $4.3 million dollars at a school board meeting on May 18th, where Badams proposed both short term and long term ideas to cut the deficit. The short term ideas were intended to cut the $4.3 million deficit by making cuts to school sports, arts, and extracurricular programs, as well as possibly closing public libraries and the police department, and maybe raising taxes. Obviously, none of these are favorable solutions. Badams agreed with this when he stated, “I can’t imagine sending our children to high schools where they don’t have sports and extracurricular activities, where we don’t have money for books”, at the school board meeting. This is why he proposed closing the high schools as a long term idea to avoid providing thousand of students with an inadequate educational experience. Badams is also concerned with the Erie school district eventually going bankrupt.
So how did the Erie school district get into this mess? Well, it’s honestly really complicated and would make this article extremely long. It boils down to a state funding system full of faults and the loss of money to charter schools. Badams and other members of the school board have been down to Philadelphia numerous times to lobby for more funding due to this. It certainly is time for America to start putting education first. Erie is not the first school district to face this issue and will not be the last – proper education is everyone’s problem. This is why I urge people to take part in local, state and federal elections. I urge people to keep the future of education in their minds during the ever so fast approaching November election.
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