"Madison School District will be out $26,000 from the state for its Parents as Teachers program because Governor Butch Otter has eliminated $1.5 million in family and early childhood education programs. Megan Riley is the coordinator of the program in Madison district and says the program serves 414 preschool students and there are more on the waiting list. “We have been able to catch a lot of delays and get families and children the help that they need before entering kindergarten so they can be more successful in school.”

Riley says the program teaches parents how to keep young children healthy and prepare them for school. “The main component is home visits that we take developmental information, and handouts, to parents about their child’s development and there’s always an activity that goes with it. This kind of helps parents be informed about what to expect for their children with typical developmental delays, or hearing problems, vision problems, health problems that there might be.”

Riley says a grant the district received will keep their Parents as Teachers program going for about another year or so but other district’s won’t have money after June 15th."

My son fell under this sort of program that was funded by the 1.5 million dollar cut. This program is the soul reason that he's doing as well as he is. If he had not had this program there is no way that he would have been ready for kindergarten. 1 1/2 years ago he could hardly be understood and had a horrible time communicating, and my husband and I had no idea what to do for him. We had just started putting our lives back together financially after he had lost his job. We could not have afforded a private speech therapist, not by any stretch of the imagination. (They run about $100.00 for one session.) And it wasn't just the speech therapist he needed -- the classroom helped develop his cognitive skills, such his sorely lacking linguistic skills, as well as assisting and guiding the development of other necessary skills.

And this sort of program is expensive, and essential. Our government is so damned determined to do anything necessary to get ahead of the rest of the world in ways that all goes back to the education we receive, to the point that they are completely fucking up the education our children do receive, which already had problems before things like the No Child Left Behind movement. And now they've started at the base level, completely destroying any chance some children have at being successful at school.

These are not necessarily the smart kids that are being stolen from here, though these children are not necessarily deficient in terms of their intelligence. These are the kids who have Downs Syndrome, or physical disabilities, or cognitive problems, or social or emotional problems that cannot be addressed in a normal public school, starting at the kindergarten age. This program is for families who, for whatever reason, cannot afford to supplement their children's needs in any other way.
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These children aren't the uneducated poor detritus of society who have nothing in store for them, as some may assume. (Assholes all who may assume this.) These children have the right to receive the supplemental education to help them be successful not only in the academic sense but in the sense of living a happy, fulfilling life.

The help my son received not only helped him with his academic skills, but helped him in ways that has helped him be a happier person, emotionally and socially. His language and speech issues were causing him all sorts of problems, and now these problems are no longer issues. If he had not received the help he did under this program I can't imagine where he would be right now, or what his future would be like, in all facets of his life.

More letters to be written, but I'd better bloody well calm down first.

My son wasn't in the Madison school district, but I can guarantee that this funding has been cut all over the state.

I wonder where the money went?

To fund the extracurricular love activities of some of our representatives?

See what I said about calming down?

Bastard.