Mr. and Mrs. B go to Sacramento.

Janis and I are going to go to Sacramento, along with about 200 other Southern Humboldt School District representatives.

From California watch:  In protest of state budget cuts that threaten school busing, representatives from the Southern Humboldt Unified School District are traveling to Sacramento to meet with their state lawmakers, Assemblyman Wesley Chesbro, D-Eureka, and Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa. The district anticipates a large turnout of students and families and welcomes other districts to join them.

"At Southern Humboldt Unified, Stewart hopes the district can siphon enough money from the classroom to provide some bus service, but it won't be "anything near" the 11 routes it offers now, he said. It also will consider charging students who are not low-income to ride the bus and ask families to carpool.
"There's really not many viable alternatives than, say, driving your kids to school," Stewart said. "When you talk about driving an hour to bring your kid to school and then you've got to drive an hour home, that's two hours, and you've got to repeat that in the afternoon. … We're talking a huge expense."
Stewart predicts that without bus service, attendance will fall, hurting funding even more.

"It's kind of a snowball," he said. "We can't get them here because we have no money, they can't get here, we have less money, and on and on." 

The school district is making a government field trip for the students out of the trip to Sacramento. I understand that the students are writing essays on why they should be chosen. A lot of parents and school representatives are going along. Long time school board member Dennis O'Sullivan and other school district officials will be meeting with Wes Chesbro. Other people involved with the trip to the capitol seem to be well organized. I, however, am still a little bit confused as to our function on the trip. I am deeply troubled by the damage that not having busing in southern Humboldt will do to our small tight-knit community. More on the damage later. I am going mostly to come up to speed on the possibility to save our community for certain disaster for some local families. It is heart wrenching, in these poor economic times, to see people losing their jobs. If nothing else, I want to go along to Sacramento to empathize with the people most affected. Like I said, I'm deeply troubled by the whole darn situation.

I understand that about 47 people have been given lay-off notices. I have heard that some of them have already found other jobs, but even if they have, that is a job that somebody else won't be getting. 47 families without employment is not good. The job loss has far reaching impact to the local business and housing prices.

The students that are being bused to school will have to find other means to get there. Some have drivers licenses, but they can't drive other kids until they are old enough to have passengers. So, students can't even give their siblings a ride to school. The students that have trouble getting to school anyway may drop out. Some parents may move closer to a school in another city, that won't help our struggling school district, they already have declining enrollment.

One other big problem that I see, is the kids that already come to school hungry and malnourished. They either come from poor or neglectful families. The community has already been providing a "back-pack" program for those kids. The back-packs are filled will nutritional food that gets them through the week. It's hard for a student to learn when they are hungry. I'm not sure what will happen to those kids if there is no way to get them to school.

I'm mostly discouraged by the fact that our politicians seem to have their own priorities and I have never seen much good come out of meeting with them. Maybe I'm cynical, so I'm going with a positive attitude that we can make a difference. I personally know many of the people losing their jobs. They are generous and caring people that have helped the community in so very many touching ways that I don't know where to even begin.  So, even though I don't have much hope, My wife and I owe it to these people to at least make a showing at Sacramento.

We are taking our own car, so we will be able to stop and go when we chose. Janis will take her camera and do some photo's for posterity. We don't intend to be in anybodies face. If the cops tell us to put the camera down, we will. I don't intend to risk Janis having her camera mistaken for a gun and slammed into her face like Felix Omai. And, I don't intend to be anywhere near pepper spray. If a cop tells me to "disperse" I will run in as many directions as I can. I am actually looking forward to the experience! If you are going, we'll see you there!