State Capitol

[Lisa464]

I live in California. I love it here, but we are in bad shape right now. Today I will go and speak for 30 seconds in front of the State Senate Committee about a 60% budget cut to our community college fost/kinship education fund. I provide about 3 workshops a month through the community colleges. I am sickened that I live in a society that pays 20 yrs old 50 million dollars a yr (more than I will see in a lifetime) to play a game of baseball that most families of 5 or more can not afford to even go see. My school district is laying off teachers, we have discontinued our athletic programs and our music programs for next year, my city is slashing our parks and  recreation programs in  half, probably selling a camp that has been owned by the city for over 50yrs, my county has laid off 85 social workers in children and family services, and somewhere in the state there is a baseball player making 50 MILLION dollars a year. Please justify this for me. I am going to tell the committee that although I understand the need to cut programs as a taxpayer, I need to have my voice be heard. Our foster parents are doing more social work now because of the layoffs in Jan. We have more and more referrals coming in and expect more when the CalWIn and Healthy Family programs are cut. We are asking foster and Kingap parents to deal with more issues on their own and we are not going to provide the support they need, the education to continue to support the children in their homes, the children that did not ask to be abused and neglected . What will happen? I can't say for sure, what I hope is that we don't continue to fail the kids who never asked to be put in these positions.