If you are concerned with our school board raising your taxes, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

With the city, county and state governments strapped for cash and the federal government printing more money or borrowing it from the Chinese, it is real unlikely that our local school system can count on getting much from on high.

The strikes and riots in Spain and Greece are caused by government workers’ unions refusing to accept pay and benefit cuts so those countries can balance their budgets.

With Social Security, Medicare and other programs underfunded, we will soon be in the same shape.

And like the kings of old, our federal government is going to send out the tax collector to make the peasants pay more.

When you squeeze what is left of our economy you cannot pay for all the unfunded programs at the federal level and the unfunded mandates at the state and local levels.

When I was in high school I bought my lunch or packed it from home. Only country kids were bussed to school.

We had a principal and secretary, our counselor was our homeroom teacher. The superintendent of schools had a staff of maybe five people.

School principals and athletic coaches taught classes (Latin, math and general science, if I remember correctly). There were maybe six or seven people in the whole school system who did not teach classes (excepting bus drivers and cafeteria workers).

How did we add all those people to the school payroll who don’t teach classes? I would vote for the “asked for increase” if the school board could come up with a plan that demonstrated that they could operate with those funds without any federal or state funds.

Also, there is a sign on the bridge approaches stating that the lighting project was a stimulus funded project.

Did we need that additional lighting? We borrowed the money from the Chinese, it has to be paid back plus interest.

Henry R. Gaudé

Natchez resident