CLEANSING

In these horrible days of economic recession and budget cuts where your total disposable income can maybe buy three chocolate bars and a Harry Potter book if you have a decent credit rating, school funding has to come up with ways to pinch pennies. School District 51 has to cut 1 million dollars from thier spending by next year.

Now I look at the dozen or so big yellow twinkie school-buses with maybe three dozen students between them and I wonder if maybe using taxi cabs or less buses could save money. But it seems that the school district can only find a way to do that by cutting an entire day off the week. That doesn't mean school will be any less hours or teachers will be paid less, but it means less days (by virtue of extending school hours) and thus less bus trips and heating.

However, there are doubts about the effectiveness this would have on actual budgeting, and concerns over the amount of damage it would do to extracurricular activities and family wellbeing.

I personally think that having to cut edjucation is stupid. Money could easily be made (and incarceration rates drastically reduced) by simply legalizing marijuana or cocaine for non-medical use and taxing it until its parts turn black and fall off. Druggies will get jobs and become productive (if unsightly) members of society so they can satisfy their expensive luxuries and eventually the stuff will lose appeal as forbidden fruit. OH, SO YOU'RE NOT WILLING TO COMPROMISE YOUR DRUG ABUSE POSITIONS BUT WILLING TO LET MILLIONS OF AMERICAN CHILDREN FALL DOWN THE EVER WIDENING SEWAGE HOLE THAT IS THE AMERICAN EDUCATION SYSTEM??

Well, maybe you're right. America has been the big dog around for a while so maybe a generation of second-rate bastard scientists and getting beat in the science race like a limbless kindergartner at tether-ball would be good to curb our rising policy gridlock, jingoism, and stupidity.