Jan 12, 2009 8:10 pm US/Eastern
Charter School Makes Plea For Help
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
Kindergartners are busy learning their ABC's at Balere Language Academy in Cutler Bay while their teachers try to shield them from the harsh arithmetic coming out of Tallahassee. Budget cuts have teachers paying for classroom supplies, including toilet paper, out of their own pockets.
A charter school that prides itself on teaching Spanish and French now speaks the language of desperation because of those state mandated cutbacks. Rocka Malik is the academy director and she says, "The gap is really wide, it is a trench."
Malik says a change in the student funding formula by the Miami-Dade school district left the academy $18,000 short in its budget projections last month. That gap threatens to become far worse because all sides—the school district and the charter schools it oversees—feel the impact of the budget ax lawmakers are wielding in our economic crisis.
At Balere Academy teachers are going on the streets to solicit donations, doing all they can to try and fend off the possibility that the charter school might not be able to stay open. In the middle of that battle the academy director can't help but ask why billions can be spent on bailing out Detroit auto makers and bankers, but classrooms are left looking for handouts.
Malik told
CBS4's Michael Williams, "I'm sure if we made go-carts in the backyard we'd be in line for a bailout. It seems you need to be a car (maker) or bank."
Her schoolchildren are neither. They are, however, the future of the community and country. Parents and teachers hope that will count for something.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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