Sign O' Times

Sign O' Times
Originally uploaded by mightyquinninwky©™

This is becoming a common site everywhere you go in the US now. It is feeling more and more like the "Great Depression". Not that I know what the "Great Depression" actually felt like, I am a bit to young..=) but I have read quite a bit about it and the signs are all around us. The signs I am writing about aren't signs in the market or in the government but the sites and sounds in our communities. Food pantries and shelters filled to capacity, lines around the block at unemployment offices, job fairs packed past capacity, but these aren't the worst signs. The worst signs are tent cities popping up outside not only our larger cities, but around average towns, people having to live in garages and boxes, people like the gentleman in the sign that are begging for a little money for any labor they can do. The ones that are the hardest hit are the children. They have to fend for themselves lots of the time while the parents are looking for work and have no stable place to study, eat and especially sleep. No place to wash their bodies and clothes regularly and no food at night or on the weekends because the schools are closed. The only stable place a lot of the children have are the schools, its gives them food, shelter, and most cases love and knowledge. Things that are hard to come buy when your homeless or living in an over capacity building. Many schools are starting to launder the clothes of these children and packing food to get them through the weekend, but this doesn't address the main issue, a stable place to live!! The sad thing that is happening now is because of lost revenue (another symptom of the recession/depression) schools are feeling an enormous budget crunch. Many are having to layoff teachers, social workers, nurses, and teachers aids. The schools that provide transportation to and from school are feeling it even more, many of these schools are even considering only having a four day week to save money. Can you imagine how far behind this will put our children? We are already behind fourteen other industrialized countries and falling fast. We aren't preparing our children for the global economy already, and the summer break has been a contributing factor in this. So getting rid of a weekday will only make a bad situation worse, but the part that I fear even more are these homeless students will have one more day a week of unbearable suffering. Their one bastion of hope, warmth, and normalcy will be one less day, it will make the "weekends" feel like an eternity, something most of us can't even imagine. Why would we take away much needed class time for our students and then throw salt in the wounds of the children that are less fortunate then most of us. I can't wrap my head around why people complain so much about paying school taxes and about tax dollars going toward schools, yet we ask them to be shelters, social workers, soup kitchens, laundries, minor medical centers, day cares, psychologist, and the list goes on and on. We expect them to work miracles, and blame them for all of societies ills. Then we pay teachers less then most other workers with comparable education, give less funding to the schools for equipment, and then expect them to produce miracles and protest and cut funding or even shut them down when the miracle isn't produced. This country will continue to lose in the global economy and our children, yours, your neighbors, and the children that have no where to go are the ones made to suffer. So next time you complain about the schools, or complain about high school taxes, think about what they are asked to do and what they are given to accomplishment. Have a great week and a belated Happy St. Pat's!!