HOUSTON—About 11,000 parents, teachers and students from across the state met up at the state capitol Saturday to rally against deep education budget cuts.
With a state budget crisis at hand, initial proposals would cut $10 billion from education funding. School districts have already begun cutting back and are projecting teacher layoffs.
"We shouldn’t be depriving our kids of their education by reducing taxes and spending," said Egberto Willies of Kingwood.
Some students also expressed concern on the matter.
"I love my teacher and I wouldn’t want to lose her or any of the other teachers," said Elizabeth Ronsenmayer, a 4th grader at Mark Twain Elementary School in Houston.
Just this week, Govenor Rick Perry said the state could not be blamed if teachers were laid off.
"The lieutenant governor, the speaker, their colleagues, are not going to hire or fire one teacher the best I can tell," said Governor Perry. "That is a local decision. Over the course of the last decade, we have seen a rather extraordinary amount of non-classroom employees added to school rolls. Are the administrators and the school boards going to make a decision to reduce those, or are they going to make a decision to reduce the number of teachers in the classroom?"
But Protesters at the rally disagreed.
"If you’re not providing adequate funding for education that means teacher cuts," said Sue Deigarrd, an HISD parent.
"We’ve never experienced budget cuts like this in my lifetime and I’m up there," said Nancy Lomax, founder of Parents for Public Schools and a grandmother to an HISD student.
Save Our Schools, an all-volunteer coalition of Texas parents, put together the rally. Part of its goal was to encourage state legislators to dip into the rainy day fund to cover the budget shortfall and to let the governor know they would like him to sign the paperwork to release $830 million in federal funding. It’s something the governor has refused to do in the past saying there were too many strings attached.
Students who came to the rally had high hopes their message would be heard.
"I made this sign and we wrote letters to legislators so that we could help with budget cuts," said Hope Miller an HSPVA student. "We really need our teachers so our classrooms won’t get bigger."
"They’re thinking about now," said Hugo Felix, an Alief ISD student. "They should be thinking about tomorrow."
