It's often been said "you get what you pay for" and here in Yadkin County people might soon get a clear demonstration of that universally-agreed upon truth.

There is perhaps only one way to describe the current and future financial situation within county government and the school district - crisis.

The administrative staff of both governmental bodies are slogging through the fine print of their budgets in an attempt to pinpoint a potential cut without hurting the quality of service both now provide.

During the Yadkin County Board of Education's meeting Monday night, the school's Finance Director Gale Hill offered over potential areas where a few dollars might be found.

The cuts that floated as ideas were not as astonishing as simply jaw-dropping in their near futility. She offered ideas that cut a few thousand dollars here and a few thousand dollars there to reduce the district's approximately annual $60 million budget to a point where it must still identify another $700,000 before draconian measures will be taken. Those measures, if the money isn't found, include the real possibility of putting working teachers on the streets and cutting popular extracurricular activities, including sports teams, or instituting a "pay to play" policy for student athletes.

The district's situation has reached a stage where there are only a few places left where dollars might be found; the state or federal government or the county.

As for seeing additional state or federal dollars, that is some months off, if ever, given the current financial situations of both.

As for additional county dollars, early indications are it will have a difficult time even maintaining the approximately $6.4 million it appropriated during fiscal year 2009/10.

Final estimates for the hole Yadkin County must fill to balance its budget for the upcoming year have been all over the place. When county commissioners first began budget hearings, a $4 million gap in potential spending against incoming revenues was the early number bandied about.

As county financial officials have met and discussed options at its disposal, that figure has gotten smaller, perhaps even by half. But still, cutting $2 million can mean a lot of pain and suffering when any additional reductions will probably mean job losses.

Recently, a local superintendent characterized his current budget situation as standing on the edge of a cliff, looking into the dark ravine below. If nothing changes, no additional revenues are developed for educational spending, it’s over into the chasm, or the budgetary unknown where classrooms have one teacher for 40 students, textbooks fall apart because new ones are too expensive, computers become a luxury item, athletics are suspended, music classes stopped, arts over....

That is a dark future.

There are few things we pass along to our children. The most important is insuring a solid education.

Each of us pay into that everyday, at the gas pump, when buying a lottery ticket or a quick meal out because we have a civic duty to insure the next generation has the same educational opportunity as the previous one.

To deny our children that opportunity is a sure recipe for a gloomy future.

Over the last year, some of the anger over the prospect of raising taxes has reached a fevered level, with rhetoric that has pushed boundaries beyond civility.

The fact is, overall tax rates now are the lowest per capita in a generation. We have paid less and less into the system and as a result, our very foundation, our children’s education, is crumbing beneath our feet.

If noting changes, then let it be said, as the rest of the industrialized world stands over the tatters of our broken country.

They got what they paid for...

CC