Most students find politics to be boring. This is because students don’t usually see how political decisions can affect them. But following Governor Corbett’s recent budget proposal to make serious state funding cuts to public education and state colleges in Pennsylvania, students and faculty alike should probably be paying a little closer attention. The school board is going to have to make very difficult decisions in the next month on where to cut funding or what to eliminate entirely from the district in order to make up for the $1.1 million we won’t be able to spend next year. There are some serious changes in store for the Freedom district, and students are either uninformed, are focusing on unfounded rumors that they have heard, or have decided early on that politics are too complicated to keep track of, and that there’s not much a few students could do anyway. On the contrary, there are several things students can do that could maybe even save public schools from this massive cut on funding, or at least reduce it. The first thing to do is to stop being mad at the school board for proposing certain ideas that you may not agree with, or for making a decision that you might not like. They are as unhappy as you are about making these decisions, and if it were up to them they wouldn’t cut or underfund anything. It may not seem like it, but they are on our side, and they only want what’s best for the district. The second thing you should do is focus your opinions toward the people who can truly make a difference: your state Senators and Representatives. Beaver County Senator Elder Vogel’s website has a direct link for contacting him: http://senatoreldervogel.com/connect.htm . By presenting the problem at hand to him on a personal level, he and others will hopefully realize that if passed, this proposal will hinder smaller public school districts like Freedom, and they can vote against Corbett’s proposed plan and actually stop it from happening. Whether or not you decide to express your opinion and actually help to solve the problem, things are going to change for the 2011-2012 school year at FHS. You can either be part of a cause, or you can sit back and wait while things you might care about disappear. You decide.