My home state of Alabama declared proration today. Governor Bob Riley declared a 12.5% cut in education funding for FY2009. This is the largest cut in education spending since the 1960’s, and at a time when the state education system was making much needed advances. I know this is happening in other states around the country, and the sad part is that this is only the beginning. Most states receive funding from state sales tax, property taxes, and corporate taxes. The economic slowdown will lead to less tax revenue as home values continue to fall, people spend less, and businesses profit margins are squeezed. The other sad reality is education will receive little attention in an economic rescue plan from the federal government. Massive amounts of funding have already been allocated to the financial sector, the military, and now the auto sector. Remaining money will be allocated to areas that trickle down to other areas of the economy and create new jobs such as building roads and other public infrastructure projects. The true reality is that the only people who can save the education system is the average citizen. Fortunately at SchoolPage, we have a way for schools to help themselves. Our school fund raising pages connect schools with their local communities and allows schools to raise significant funding from the community at no cost to the schools or parents. Here is how it works: Local businesses donate money directly to schools and receive ad space on the school’s fund raising page. Members of the community visit their school’s fund raising page and see ads from their local sponsors. Members click the ‘help your school’ button on the page and local sponsors ads are rotated out with other local sponsors. Once the local sponsor’s ads are used up, the local business donates more to schools. Click the link below to see an example of a school’s fund raising page:

http://schoolpage.net/schools/127067/help_my_school

This program, along with many additional SchoolPage programs will help pull our education systems above water and allow us to advance education further. The United States currently ranks in the lower quartile in education among its global peers. True economic recovery will only come through systematic advances in education. We have lost too much ground to our global peers and we can no longer allow local, state, and federal governments to treat education as a secondary issue. If you care about your child’s education and future, please email this blog to everyone you know and help spread the word about SchoolPage. Together we can make a difference. In closing, I’d like to share wisdom I just discovered:

“It’ll be a great day when schools get the funding they need for textbooks and computers, while the military has to hold a bake sale to raise money for new weapons.”

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