Education rally: 'Enough is enough'

Camden first-grade teacher Karen Perrotta is trying to keep state budget cuts from affecting her students.

This year, she shelled out the money to buy the seeds, plants and potting soil for her class's unit on plants because the school couldn't afford the supplies.

"I can teach about plants from a textbook," she said. "But when you're in the first grade, it's far more memorable to get to really grow your own plants."

She and a retired teacher joined forces to buy midday snacks for students who couldn't afford to bring them from home.

"I just make it part of my weekly grocery bill now: snacks for my kids" Perrotta said.

And when her students' families didn't have extra cash to help pay for field trips, Perrotta gladly pulled out her checkbook.

"I'm not special," she said. "Teachers all over the state are doing the same thing."

But another round of budget cuts to K-12 education, which state lawmakers are discussing, may be more than Perrotta and many other S.C. teachers can bear.

"Enough is enough," said Perrotta, a 32-year educator who, along with hundreds of other teachers, administrators, students and education organizations attended an education rally on Thursday at the State.

Their hope: to persuade lawmakers to prevent further cuts to K-12 education. The House's version of the budget, passed earlier this month, includes a roughly $100 million cut to schools.

Education groups estimate that, if this version of the budget passes, it will return state spending per student to its 1995 funding level. More art and music classes, homework centers, student programs and school jobs will be lost, they project.

Perrotta worries if she'll have a job next year. She worries whether her daughter, also a teacher, will too. And if they do return to the classroom, she worries about new challenges the budget cuts will bring.

Already, the school can't afford substitute teachers," she added. "We're going to have to increase class sizes," said Perrotta, who chose to leave a job as a school administrator two years ago and return to the classroom.

"I have 19 students now and they keep me on my toes. I can't imagine having 30 first-graders and trying to teach them how to read and write."

Lawmakers have said they're doing the best they can in a difficult budget year during which nearly all state agencies are taking big cuts.

But the hundreds at Thursday's rally were not convinced.

"(Lawmakers) are not putting children first," said Merlene Stevenson Wilson, an assistant principal at Carver-Edisto Middle School in Orangeburg 4, who attended the rally. "They can find the money if they want to. You have to put education first."

At Wilson's school, teachers and staff members have been furloughed, most field trips have been eliminated, and this year's summer school has been canceled.

"I don't know what those kids are going to do to remediate, but there's no summer school," Wilson said with a slow shake of her head. "It's pitiful."