School budget cuts lead to hard choices
Dr. Wallace: Our school district failed to convince the voters in our community to vote yes for a bond issue that would have allowed us to keep marching band, boys’ and girls’ athletics, and vocal music. Now the district superintendent has announced that two of the three programs will be dropped.
I’m in the marching band and also sing in our award-winning choir and I’m afraid that these two programs are headed for the scrap heap because the sports program in our town is king. The bond issue would definitely have passed if its failure would have meant canceling the athletics program.
I know that you are a former coach as well as a former principal, so you probably would also dump the band and vocal music programs so the almighty athletes can run around fields and courts chasing a ball. Still, I’d like your comments. — Nameless, Somewhere in California.
Nameless: A superintendent having to make such program cuts faces a cruel choice indeed, and I’m sorry that your district’s budget crisis (and the community’s response to it) has created this dilemma. Students will get cheated no matter what the superintendent does.
When I was a principal, my role was to do everything in my power to provide all of our 2,700 students the best possible education. Extracurricular programs of every sort — and the greater variety, the better — are crucial to a well-rounded, quality education.
What would I have done, facing such a choice? It seems to me the only fair solution under these regrettable circumstances would be to keep the program that had the highest student participation.
Dr. Wallace: I’m a faithful reader of your column even though I am a grandmother. I remember several years ago you wrote a column
ROBERT WALLACE
on epilepsy. At the time, I thought it interesting, but it had no special meaning for me. Now all of that has changed. Our beautiful 14-yearold granddaughter has been diagnosed as an epileptic. She is on medication, which has helped her immensely, but being young she sometimes forgets to take her medicine regularly and the result is a seizure.
Will you be so kind as to reprint the column on epilepsy? I know it would be beneficial for all of your readers. — Grandmother, Erie, Pa.
Grandmother: I researched my files and found that the “Facts on Epilepsy” column was printed several years ago, but the information is still useful and pertinent.
More than 2 million citizens of the United States and Canada have epilepsy. Yet, so much public ignorance surrounds this disorder that its victims often suffer from senseless cruelty.
Medical science has learned enough about the disease that, with proper care, 80 percent of those who have epilepsy can lead normal lives.
But according to one expert, “The host of psychological and social problems (misunderstanding by family and friends, inability to get a job) that epilepsy can carry with it can be more difficult to handle than the seizure problem itself.”
Epilepsy is usually the result of a brain injury occurring during pregnancy or delivery or from serious childhood infections. Alcoholism, lead poisoning and blows to the head from sports, have also been linked to its development.
It doesn’t take much to start epilepsy. If as few as seven of the 120 billion nerve cells in the brain malfunction at the same time a seizure can result.