Last month, more than 1,100 public school students in Oklahoma City walked out of their high schools to protest looming budget cuts of $30 million.
“I had an opportunity with golf, you know, I could have maybe gotten a scholarship, who knows, and they cut golf so there went that opportunity,” said protest organizer Cassidy Coffey, a straight-A junior at U. S Grant High School. “My future’s being affected, all of their futures are being affected, as well,” she added, pointing to her fellow protestors. Getting rid of the tennis team also ruined another student’s ability to potentially garner a scholarship.
To help alleviate what officials refer to as a “catastrophic” budget, U. S. Grant laid off 20 teachers. “By firing our teachers, it’s making our class sizes larger and it’s disrupting the learning environment,” said Adriana Martinez, a junior at U. S. Grant.
The school’s principal, Greg Frederick, admits that some classes are jammed with 40 bodies. In all, 208 teachers and 92 administrators will receive pink slips in Oklahoma City this summer.
Though teachers, arts programs and sports teams are being cut, the district still supports an expensive English Language Learner (ELL) program.
It turns out that illegal immigration is a zero-sum game where one party gets the resources and the other is left with an empty bag. One out of every three students in the city’s school district is enrolled in the English Language Learners (ELL) program, representing an annual cost of $125 million—more than four times the current budget shortfall.
As other programs cut teachers, the district is putting out the call for new ELL instructors, though it has a hard time finding them. In fact, according to federal officials, the state will need 400 new ELL teachers by 2018 to adequately serve this growing population, which would cost $18 million. Oklahoma taxpayers already spend $395 million on failing ELL programs that serve almost 45,000 pupils.
In the past two years, moreover, Oklahoma has received 786 Unaccompanied Alien Minors, who crossed the border illegally from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Their education will cost the state another $7 million a year.
Indifferent to the impassioned pleas from students, just hours after the walkout, the acting schools superintendent called for $7 million in additional budget cuts.
As illegal immigrants get a free ride, American citizens like Cassidy Coffey, who has the gumption to fight back, are suffering. “We’re the future,” she said, predicting a bleak outcome. “How are we going to thrive as, you know, humans in this society if we’re not taught how to do so?”
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To all the young students in Oklahoma and elsewhere whose dreams are being destroyed: Obama needs more voters for Hillary to be elected, and your Congressmen also want more votes for their election and/or need money from the US Chamber of Commerce so that is all that matters. They don’t care about you or your future.
How many of the American students are willing to admit that the foreign students are a part of the problem? I doubt they will. We’re afraid to speak the truth in this country.
Looks like Trump’s wall might not be a bad idea. A story from a few days ago said that : “The US embassy in Mexico has warned it’s citizens about travel to Oaxaca, a southern state convulsed by protests in recent weeks. The message was issued after eight people were killed in Nochixtlan. Staffers were told to travel only by air to the resort towns of Huatulco and Puerto Escondido.”
Basically Mexico is a corrupt violent society run by drug gangs. The few people who speak out against them don’t live long. Or are rich enough to afford bodyguards.
A couple months ago a golf tournament was moved from Trump’s Miami Doral course, where it had been held for several years, to Mexico City for next year. Trump made the comment that they better have kidnap insurance. Naturally the press had a fit, but they didn’t explain that Mexico is what Investopedia.com called “the number one country for kidnappings”, and that many individuals and corporations take out insurance for just that prospect. It’s a cost of doing business.