CNB

At a precise point in the periodic life of every newspaper, whether weekly or daily, there comes a moment when a final choice has to be made, the final sentence of the final story ended and the paper sent to press. Some of the stuff is good, some not so good and some we wish later could be X-ed out and redone. But it's too late. The time for scrapping all the pages and starting over again is past — It's called a deadline.

A deadline is what we have reached in providing facilities to publicly educate our children here in Fayette County. As many as one thousand additional children will show up in front of Fayette schools next year, expecting to be taken inside and taught. The next year and the next and the next will see comparable population increases.

Somebody's got to pay to educate these — our — children. That somebody is us.

We may not like every choice of every project made by the county board of education. And still the children will show up at the schoolhouse door.

We may demand better management of our tax dollars in the future. And still the children will arrive at the schoolhouse door.

We may wish the board had chosen a property tax approach instead of a sales tax approach. And still the children will come.

We may want a lot of things different, but what we are asked to approve next Tuesday is a one-cent sales tax to pay for 289 new classrooms to seat those 5,202 children who will show up next year, and the next and the next and the next and the next, expecting to be educated.

We will be paying for a new high school, middle school, two elementary schools and a host of additions. And we will be buying land to accommodate the next (sixth) high school, middle school and elementary school after that.

Included in the $90 million package will be athletic facilities' additions and expansions. Some of us like that and some of us don't. But it's part of the package.

There are now 97 “portable classrooms” outside existing schools. Some of those will go away with the approval of the special local option sales tax (SPLOST).

What happens if the “Nos” win the day?

A whole lot more “portable classrooms,” paid for out of the school system's existing operating budget. A little math will inform even the most diehard SPLOST opponent: More money will go to facilities, less money will go to pay for teachers teaching kids.

Also probable: Split sessions, with half the kids in the county going in the morning session and half in the afternoon.

Anybody who has ever worked while being a parent will understand without need for explanation the nightmare that double sessions pose for family schedules. The social strains and resulting social costs will be extremely high, maybe even destructively high.

Almost certainly, classes at all levels will balloon in size, and the pupil-teacher ratio will increase as school operating funds go to pay for trailers instead of teachers.

We appreciate the opposing views expressed in our editorial pages today and in weeks past. In fact, we agree with many of their criticisms of the spending package and the board's choices.

But we also see the children, those thousands of children in just the next five years at the schoolhouse door, who will be looking to us to provide a quality education for them.

We can continue to meet their needs by voting “YES” next Tuesday.

Voting “No” just postpones the day of reckoning, when the bill will be much higher, and the losses — in student potential and social costs to family life — may approach an universally unacceptable level.

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