Kansas Roads More Important than Education?

I just saw on local news channel KWCH that Reader's Digest ranked the roads in Kansas number one in the nation, which was of course followed by an interview with an official from the Kansas Department of Transportation telling folks why we shouldn't have to cut any money out of the KDOT budget next year. That we would certainly drop from the prestigious rank of #1 if we were to cut the KDOT budget.

At the same time, the district where I work is looking at having to cut somewhere around $25 MILLION from our budget for next year - and that's just one district. Top that with the fact that the state has already been delinquent making payments to school districts a number of times this year and it leads to some potentially terrifying implications for our education system in Kansas.

Now it may be that I am biased because I am an educator, but it seems to me a really easy way to get more money into the education budget would be to move some of the money from the KDOT budget over to the education budget. I know as a Americans we are taught that it we must be number one (think how many times the medal count was displayed on NBC during the Olympics) but as a Kansan I am really okay with letting our road conditions slide down the list a bit if that means our students can continue to get the educations they deserve.

Image courtesy of Flickr and TheDphotography.