Our schools: Some real issues

It is really amazing how many cuts are happening to really important things in our community, and yet they seem to be under the radar, so either no-one knows about it, or not enough people know about it to challenge the cuts.

Two of these cuts that are really short-sighted and will have a big and negative effect on our children have hardly rated a mention in the media.

I wonder about their priorities when we read day after day about boy racers (who become heroes with all the publicity) but we have heard nothing about the Transport cuts to the “walking school bus” idea and the Environment cuts to the “Enviro-schools” programme.

The support for parents to walk their children in a “walking bus” to school is just fantastic.  You just have to watch the mums and dads walking with their own children, picking up their friends along the way, to know that this is a great thing for families and for our community.  But it takes a little bit of support to organise.  That support is now going to be gone.  

This is not cost saving.  It is cost shifting.  The families will have to pick up the total cost and responsibility.  They are already doing their bit.  The government should do theirs.

The Enviro-schools programme was designed to open the eyes of children to the effects that their actions have on the environment, and to encourage them to make changes to those actions to reduce the effect on the environment.  Sound sensible?  Yes!  Deserve government support?  Yes!  Are they getting it – well yes, at the moment, but it’s another programme headed for the axe.

They are both no brainer great ideas.  They should be supported!