After the barrage of numbers presented during our last meeting, it’s difficult to know where to begin a short speech that will reflect adequately our chagrin at our Restructuring Proposal. I’ll start by saying Don’t Buy the Lie. Less education is not better—for anyone! Collier County Schools has four times the budget that Rockford schools has as well as twice as many people and households. Nevertheless, even with all this new money to manage, our new leadership has decided upon a Chicken Little approach to next year. The Naples Daily News headlined a story on January 12 that claims “Top students are unfairly dictating class schedule.” Ms. Hayes, the article says, claims that the voices of opposition that have been the loudest come from students who want as many AP classes as they can take. Changing high schools from the current block schedule, to what she terms the Traditional 55-minute schedule doesn’t seem to take into account that the block has been in place at my school since 1992. I currently teach one AP class, two senior honors classes, one regular senior class and one freshman class. At each level, I use the entire 87 minutes allowed for teaching. Our classes never take school time to complete homework. My freshmen, my regulars, honors, and AP students flourish under the present system. Even though my principal has forbidden discussion of the issue, nearly all of them irrepressibly report that they do not want to change. AP students’ voices are perhaps more articulate and available but that’s really because students in lower classes are too busy working multiple jobs and taking care of home responsibilities and have limited access to transportation to come here to express their opinions—especially since it is clear that students’ and parents’ words on the issue are not welcome in these ears. Nevertheless, with due respect to Ms. Hayes, I think that the AP students are not the people who are dictating the class schedule. Another recent NDN article points out that we face 8 to 20 million dollars of budget cuts and the FTE of 410 fewer students. It’s perhaps important for Naples citizens to put those numbers in context. $20 million, the worst-case scenario according to Superintendent Thompson, is only 1.5 % of our budget. A less than 2% reduction in income should hardly be cause to claim that the sky is falling. There must be another reason. Perhaps it not Chicken Little we need to worry about; maybe what we’re hearing is a story told so that others might thrive while we cut 83 teaching positions, cut the high school schedule, cut 7 ESE counselors, cut 7 gifted teachers, cut $800,000 worth of new administrators for the planned new schools, not to mention cutting Mr. Withers secretary. If the Superintendent’s Consolidation Plan has as its objective improved student achievement and development I’d say that all this cutting is a big mistake. Cutting high school courses from 8 to 6, cutting required credits from 32 to 24, cutting out guidance positions, cutting care givers for the Emotionally and Behaviorally Disabled and the Severely Emotionally Disabled youth in our schools is too much cutting for the wrong reasons. Of course the Thompson Plan is about adding, too. We add 41 reading coaches and 12 math specialists. We add 4 new assistant principals (to use Dr. Abalos phrase) to the tune of $95,200 each. But what is that other reason? Might the reason for the cutting be that it’s a method of saying to the special master that the teachers’ union is wrong. We really don’t have enough money to give teachers any raise at all. I think we should reject the notion that the sky above Naples is going to fall next year. I think the board should reject the Superintendent’s Consolidation Plan. Don’t Buy the Lie. Less education is not better—for anyone.