As the saying goes, sometimes when you don’t have anything good to say you shouldn’t say anything at all. But the problem is that would be too easy. As co-presidents of our PTA, we feel compelled to relay the message or information back to our Stevenson Community. And the message as you might guess is not good.

The Burbank Unified School District is desperately struggling to deal with the State’s drastic cutbacks to our public education system. This will not come as news to anybody that hasn’t had their head buried deep in the sand. The issue that has become more and more apparent to us over the last month’s PTA Council and School Board meetings is the depth and the degree of our problems.

Without detailing all of the factors that are making our national, state ad local economies extremely weak these days, suffice it to say that we, as a school district, do not have the necessary revenues coming in to maintain our status quo and will be very hard pressed to stay solvent let alone out of bankruptcy over the next three years. Our school principals and board members have stopped trying to put a smiley face on it. Our situation is dire. Walk up and ask any of them about the future of our public schools and you will get an ear-full – classroom-size will balloon up to teacher / student ratios none of us are prepared for – INCLUDING K – 3; staff & administrators will be noticeably reduced in numbers; security at our high schools will be reduced; librarians and school nurses will be almost non-existent; art, music and PE will soon suffer drastic cutbacks. And this is their “best case scenario”. Seriously.
Now we assume that most of the folks that are reading this are already informed because you are the type of people who… well, stay informed. So here is what we suggest – with all of our anger, disappointment and frustration with this situation, all of our deep concern for our kids education and welfare, our voice must be heard! Our SHOUT has to be heard OUTSIDE of our small circle of Stevenson PTA and FFS. We have to start talking to more people, neighbors, relatives all of the time about this huge mess or nothing is going to change except (we promise you) it will get worse. So please be part of the solution. Get involved. Come to meetings, speak your mind, spread the word here in Burbank.

There is true power in numbers!

Tiffany Bakas & Felix Chamberlain
The Tag Team Stevenson PTA, ptatagteam@stevensonpirates.net