This certainly isn’t the first, and won’t be the last, story about budget cuts for education that reach into the classroom, but Louisiana is reducing by $16 million its spending for precollegiate education, including a reduction of $2.3 million in a program to improve reading and math skills.
The midyear cuts announced by the state Department of Education are part of an across-the-board set of reductions to state agency budgets Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal mandated to cope with a budget shortfall.
We’ll certainly continue to keep a close eye on how states and districts deal with strained budgets. Even though there are signs of economic recovery, analysts have been quick to note that the recovery of state and district coffers will be slower to come.
Just last week, the Washington Post reported on proposed cuts in the 173,500-student Fairfax County, Va., school system in suburban Washington. A new, $2.3 billion budget put forward by Superintendent Jack D. Dale would reportedly increase class sizes, “gut” summer school, and eliminate freshman sports and foreign-language instruction for elementary students.