We’ve got a handful of commitments – OK, honestly, three – for our noon Friday Big Mac Attack. Count me in, and we’re at four, so add another, you know, few dozen, and maybe we can send City Council the message that we’ve done enough damage to our local schools already.
“I feel a Big Mac coming on!!” resident Malone Moss wrote in a comment on the story introducing the Big Mac Attack on the AFP on Monday, after commenting earlier in the thread with a rhetorical question on the push by libertarian Vice Mayor Frank Lucente to slash the city school budget $600,000 to provide the money for his proposed three-cent tax-rate cut, which would give the average Waynesboro taxpayer a $60 break on their local taxes, or $5 a month, a total equivalent to a Big Mac extra-value meal.
“Why does the council need to cut the education budget for the City of Waynesboro? I want to know WHY. What is it that the citizens don’t know?” Moss asked in her rhetorical question.
What the citizens don’t know is that nearly 20 percent of ninth-graders enrolled in Waynesboro High School didn’t graduate with their class in 2008. No Child Left Behind, indeed. And that school enrollments have been growing the past few years as school budgets have been declining. Lucente famously praised School Superintendent Robin Crowder last spring for doing more with less. That’s some pat on the back considering the challenges our schools are facing today.
This is why I’ll join whoever else comes out to the Charles T. Yancey Municipal Building for lunch Friday to have my Big Mac.
FYI – don’t feel compelled to Mac it up. Bring whatever – a sandwich, pizza, something from Chickpea’s or Shukri’s down the street. To be honest, I’m not much of a Big Mac fan, which is to say, I’ll have to get mine made to order (two all beef patties, no special sauce, lettuce, cheese, hold the pickles and onions, on a sesame-seed bun). And I’ll have to run a few extra wind sprints to burn the calorie overload, but I’ll take this one for the team if it means we don’t end up gutting our school system.
– Story by Chris Graham
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