To the editor:

The inevitable sign of springtime is here for the GFW Education Association – educators worrying about their positions being cut. We don’t want our colleagues to lose their jobs but our greatest concern is for our students. When cuts happen, our class sizes rise and they lose access to classes and programs that they love.

Our new course catalog was recently released. This catalog was touted as a great expansion of programs. The missing part of the announcement was that some courses would actually not be offered next year, with art and tech ed courses rotating on a two-year cycle. This creates confusion and instability. Juniors who were planning on signing up for these classes will never get another opportunity to take a woodworking, multimedia or advanced welding. Other students were hoping these changes would restore past cuts to English and science classes were also disappointed.

We understand that the district needs to cut. Teachers want to be a part of the solution that gets us out of financial stress, but not at the cost of our students’ opportunities. We spent many years getting ourselves here, we can take our time getting out of it. Especially if it means not sacrificing our students’ education and especially not in the first year of our operating levy that was passed by our community to help assure that quality programming is there for GFW students.

This situation yet again shows that our school funding system is broken. We need to fully fund education so that we don’t have to make financial decisions because the business of running a school gets in the way of providing the quality education that our students deserve.

Heather Bakke

President,

GIbbon Fairfax Winthrop

Education Association