Samson
Póg Mo Thóin
As far as any widespread "cutting back on sports," I frankly remain unconvinced. I agree that extrapolating the condition of schools from one locale to the nation, or even the state, or even within the same school district can be problematic, but given the graph of school spending offered in the thread, it would appear that they certainly have not been "given less."
The lastest year in the chart was, IIRC 2004-2005 and was provided to show a comparison of State, Local, Federal, Other as overall percentages of education funding.
The real economic crunch as been the last 2-3 years which are beyond the scope of the chart.
In the district I worked for we've had serious cutbacks including pay freezes, pay reductions, RIF's, and program cuts. For example last year alone we had to cut $21,000,000 (about 20%) of the budget and this year coming up we are forcasting another 8-9 million in reductions.
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No doubt.
I was addressing the comment that covered the past 35 years of educators "being asked to do more with less." Clearly this is untrue.
But the fact is if the school cut back 20% of the budget last year, and increased their budgets only 50% between 1990 and 2008, they still have a gross gain of 30% in the budget. A business that increased their gross revenues this much over the same period would be happy.