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Editor, News-Register:
In light of the president's signed Executive Order pledging to do everything in his power to demolish the Department of Education, I'm wondering how you plan to vote when this is put before Congress.
On March 16th, you were quoted in a WTRF article by Steven Moore as saying, "Hopefully this will all iron out and it will be better. It will be better for the local educator, the local principal, the local county board to be able to deliver to those localities a higher quality, more efficient (education), and the dollars will go farther, because they won't be diluted here in Washington D.C. with all of the regulatory environment you see here."
What is the president's plan for what happens next? Have you read something about what happens following planned destruction that the public isn't aware of? How do you believe this will be better for the local educators, the county boards? How will this be better for the bus drivers, the cafeteria workers, the janitors, the ecosystems of paying jobs that keep a school functioning? How will this be better for the disabled school children? The children with behavioral disorders? The child whose only stable place in this world is the inside of a classroom?
How are you planning to fund the $780 million deficit if schools no longer receive federal funding? Through the raising of property or other state taxes? How will that work when people aren't moving to your state because of hostile state government policies and a lack of available jobs?
Will you be relying on parents to take care of education spending for K-12? Where will the money come from when these parents--our state--is the fourth poorest in the nation? Where approximately half of children are eligible for Medicaid? In a state with the highest rate of foster care than any in the nation?
Where will this money come from for the children, the teachers, the board, the bus drivers, the cafeteria workers, janitors and all other administrative positions? I know that conservatives are fond of "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps" but what happens when there are no boots to speak of?
If nothing else, you have an obligation to the children of this state to not cause undue harm or hardship. Every child in this country has a right to education and this Executive Order is a clear threat to that right. Unless the president, you, and every senator in this country has a well-formed, ready-to-go plan to abolish a department whose sole mission is to educate and uplift future generations, then you owe it to your constituents to vote against this heedless bulldozing.
Rolaine Ossman
Wellsburg