If you were the head bureaucrat of a government program and, due to declining tax revenues, you had to make cuts in your program, one that's full of questionable spending programs, would you cut those programs or the programs that are most valued to taxpayers? Which would get your point across to the politicians that oversee your agency that you run a mean, tight ship that cannot afford to lose any money?
Fairfax County Schools Superintendent Jack D. Dale proposed to grow class sizes and ditch teachers, too, as a way to save. But then he went on to talk about the very programs that parents live for, the kinds of things real estate agents trying to move a particularly undistinguished rancher will memorize.
In this round of budget cuts, the county might have to end foreign language programs in elementary schools, cut the strings to some music classes, put summer school on ice, pull back on full-day kindergarten and eliminate freshman sports. The size and scope of the cuts are unprecedented for the 173,000-student school system, and more than $100 million in savings is going to be painful no matter where the ax falls.
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