I just saw this thread, so, the Hoosier teacher will chime in. In FWCS (the district where I teach) the budget woes cost over 100 teachers their jobs. Now, understand, they didn't lay off ANY administrators, just teachers. We have some excellent teachers who bust their butts in the classroom everyday, but, have kids who refuse to learn. It doesn't have anything to do with what or how the teachers teach, the kids are just lazy and won't do their work and the parents want to blame us, when they don't do anything about making sure their kids do their homework. Now, that being said, that state budget cost our school 6 teachers (when we have a population of 918 kids in a building meant to hold no more than 800), so our class sizes will only increase. Until the government figures out that they need to spend more money on education, the problem will only get worse. However, until the parents decide to make education #1 in their house, the problem won't get any better either.