Welcome to the Big (Cut) Apple

Cuomo has done it again: cut a significant amount from New York’s budget to decrease the state’s outrageous deficit. Along with healthcare, education for grades K-12 was among the casualties. According to many news outlets, a record $1.5 billion has been cut from the $23 billion budget. Perhaps what is even more repugnant (though typical), is the fact that the poorer districts will be more greatly affected than the wealthier ones. Take Long Island for example.
It is widely known that Long Island is among the most economically segregated suburbs in the nation. More often than not, such economic differences were predetermined by race and therefore created an atmosphere of stagnation, if not complete nihilism, in such communities. Poorer districts, such as Brentwood, Freeport and William-Floyd, are the least funded and thus, most reliant upon state aid to create programs including foreign languages and Advanced Placement classes to help their students prepare for college. Meanwhile, affluent areas like Westhampton Beach and Syosset are funded by local tax dollars and receive the same cuts. The only difference is that the latter two are obviously not affected by these cuts while further down the spectrum, districts are often forced to merge, slash programs like sports and the arts from the curriculum––or even worse––shut down some of its schools due to inadequate funding.
Wasn’t this exactly what President Obama was calling against? Yet, the ally we as New Yorkers saw in Governor Cuomo suddenly became a reminiscence of the same Bush-era politics we fought so hard against. Our children are our future and if we don’t educate them with the right tools (for everyone, not just the rich, who are supposedly society’s best assets), we won’t be able to get this job market and this economy as a whole back on its feet; which also means not being able to compete with the rest of the world in the global economy. We seek to plant more trees, yet the seeds of the Big Apple are continuously being pitted and horded only for the select worthy to plant…as our most vital crop continues to die off…