Atomictumor

Well, since I missed the school board meeting on the 30th, it took until today to finally find out, in the Observer, that the school board has cut bussing within a mile of school boundaries, along with two elementary school teachers, and a few other academic roles.

I think, frankly, that the school board wanted to draw blood with this decision. I know Netmom will disagree with me (and I hope she pops in to talk about this), but I’ve said both privately and publicly that cutting the bussing is worse on a large scale than a lot of the other cuts that were proposed. It seemed that we got a horror list of things to be cut, and by god it was going to be one of those things.

Why couldn’t athletics see an axe every once in a while? Screw the people who only see the school system as a winning team, they have college football for that crap. I do understand that a proposed $80,000 athletics director position was shot down before this meeting, but I personally would have cut a bit deeper.

One man’s opinion. However, seems to me that its a pretty fair one. While I don’t like the idea of elementary schools having larger classrooms, at least these cuts are not going to result in firing anybody, just not filling open positions. Thats a good move, in a bad situation.

Here are the real barbs of the situation.

• Why the hell did it take 3 days for this news to come out? Hell, the damn Oak Ridger didn’t even see fit to print the news, instead opting for an inane piece about opium (black tar heroin, indeed. Its opium, dumbassses. Its heroin in the same way that dinosaurs are rocket fuel).
  What the hell is wrong with this town that it can’t promote something like this? This will impact hundreds of families, but its not news worthy? Rock on to the Observer for printing it as soon as they could. I’ve been impressed with them lately to the point that I’m recalling my comment about them being a tool of the John Birch Society. (Not that any of you can find it, since its lost to the evil of Godaddy’s Magnethands technicians).
• Like I said above, I fear the school board is using ‘the nuclear option’. Bussing has been a part of Americana for about as long as all of us have been alive, and the idea that Oak Ridge, TN, is not going to provide bussing for kids within the boundaries of the school district is a barn burner. Is it designed to get enough public opinion on their side, and have these dumb bastards on the city council change their mind?I don’t see what good that’d be, because there was an overwhelming show of support for the school board when council was determining the budget slice, so I don’t see why they’d change their minds. So does the board really, truely, think that cutting bussing is the best cut in a multimillion budget?
• Will this impact every school? How is this mile measured, as the crow files, or by road length?