Sat in on the Site counsil meeting at school this afternoon. That is the group of teachers and parents that the principal has to talk to about budget and how and where the money is being spent. I was totally lost. It was quite and eye opener though. Here we are, half way through the fiscal year and the state is cutting $1 BILLION from the education funds due to the overwhelming deficit we are in. For districts that have already spent all the money they were allocated, this means they are going to be put in the red for the next year. Fortunately, I am in a fairly conservative (in OH SO MANY WAYS!) district that forsaw this crisis. There has been a freeze on district spending for some time and when the state comes to take back our money we will have it for them to take back. Not good for this year - classroom funds are gone, repairs on laminators and copy machines aren't happening - but at least we won't be starting with negative dollars next year. Ugh. If my head didn't hurt so much tonight I would really get into how frustrating this is...but for now I just can't get up the steam. Suffice it to say that this is bad. Very, very BAD.