This is why I DON'T read the newspaper

This just made me sick. Especially now that I have worked at the school a couple of times, and seen first hand the shape our school system down here is currently in. This was on the front page of yesterdays local paper........

More than 150 {local} teaching and other positions will remain unfilled for the next 10 months due to an expected budget shortfall, officals announced Tuesday.
Even more teaching and other jobs may be cut next fall. The system currently has 116 vacancies on the local school level, many of which are teachers, as well as 56 central office vancancies. Those positions are now under an official hiring freeze.
Many teaching vacancies are in inner-city schools. One school has six vacancies, including four first grade teaching slots.
In addition to the firing freeze, the system may have to cut some of its 433 locally funded teaching positions. Those include assistant principals, teachers assigned to reduce class sizes, music and art teachers and others that the system hired in addition to the state allotment.
The state gives local systems enough money to hire one teacher for every 18 to 25 students, depending on the grade level. But because those students are not evenly distributed among schools, {superintendent} said, he hires these extra teachers.

DETAILS OF SCHOOL CUTBACKS

School officials said they would decrease the system's spending this year and next by taking the following steps:
*Enact a hiring freeze through Sept. 30, 2008. That means 116 jobs in schools and 56 in the central office that are vacant now will remain so. People who are currently on the payroll but retire, quit are fired or are reassigned during that time will be replaced. But supervisors will have to show that the job is "essential to operation."
*Reduce the number of teachers and other positions that are funded through local revenue above the state allotment. The system will reorganize and redistribute personnel to address vacancies.
*Further reduce staffing through attrition.
*Eliminate overtime pay for employees, which totaled $1 million last year and has been on track to do so again so far this year. Employees would get compensatory time off instead.
*Eliminate in 2009 the administrative program, which trains people to become principals while they work at a school in need of an assistant principal.
*Travel and staff development will be limited only to requirements set forth by schools receiving federal funding, to training that is required for employees to maintain their certification and to training required by law.
*A 30-day moratorium has been placed on all spending, with the exception being utility bills, cafeteria services, emergencies and a couple of other exemptions.
*The system has asked officials with the Alabama Department of Education to audit the special-education services currently being offered. Officials suggested they may be providing too much.
*Streamline legal costs. The school system has spent an average of $1 million on legal fees through the Atchison Firm over the last couple of years.
*Refrain form adding new programs and initiatives that require funding from local sources.
*Reduce and eliminate outside contracts where practical. And minimize temporary services.

Personally, I think they should add "pay cut for superintendent and other over-paid employees, to make up for the budget shortage" to their list. The current superintendent is wwaaaayyyy over-paid, and the new one starting at the first of the year was promised a huge paycheck to come here. Wtf? Why can't the cut backs start there? Aren't the future of this state and country more important than their damn paychecks? Obviously not.
So, what pisses you off?