Ga. voters express strong opinions on education, taxes

AJC:

Gwinnett County parent Laurine Eidson has watched her daughter's classes at Grayson High School get bigger because of budget cuts, but she's unsure how to address school funding.

"We probably need to do a combination of all three things, but I don't think there's a lot of extra money in other programs that can go to education," Eidson said. "The people that have money probably need to pay more, but I don't know how you would go about getting support for that. It's a problem, but I really don't know what the answer is."

Tim Callahan, a spokesman for the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, said it was encouraging that some supported making education funding a greater priority.

He questioned whether people understand all the cuts schools have absorbed in recent years. Education funding began dropping before the recession as Gov. Sonny Perdue and lawmakers implemented a series of reductions in what systems would have received based on enrollment. These austerity cuts have totaled more than $3 billion since 2003.

"If education had been fully funded before we experienced the latest cuts, we would have been able to live within our means," Callahan said. "We keep trying to do education on the cheap, and it will hurt us in the long run."