The "No S#!t Sherlock" Headline Of The Day

And while I am highlighting something from the Arizona Republic, I'm not criticizing them - some days, I think that it takes complete bluntness to get the message through.

From the Rep -

Valley parents upset by larger class sizes due to budgets

The effects of the state's budget crisis are showing up inside packed classrooms in Scottsdale and Fountain Hills.

As school started Aug. 9, the two districts had larger class sizes in every grade, including kindergarten classes of 27 to 30 children.

Some Scottsdale parents became alarmed the week before school started, meeting with district administrators to express their concerns. In Fountain Hills, a group of parents addressed the governing board at its meeting last week.

OK, I'm going to stereotype a little here, but given that the "upset parents" in the article are from Scottsdale and Fountain Hills, they are likely to be Republicans or Republican-leaning independents*, and have wholly embraced the R ideology of "cut MY taxes no matter what the cost!  Everybody knows that teachers and people on state assistance are just leeches!"

Now that they find out that the "cost" of the tax cuts, the costs that they didn't worry about, actually impacts them, they get upset.

Welcome to the real world. 


You get what you pay for, and if you  pay for crap, you get crap.


*Scottsdale: Rs outnumber Ds by 20 percentage points; Fountain Hills: Rs have a 26 percentage point advantage.  In \both municipalities, Independents outnumber Ds, though Ds and Is combined outnumber Rs. (Source: Maricopa County Recorder's Office)

BTW - I've heard anecdotally that activity fees, even general ones that aren't related to a specific sport or something similar, are way up this year, resulting in a lot of parents with sticker shock.  Unless more Democrats are elected to the legislature and Terry Goddard wins the race for Governor, expect more increases in both direct fees and class sizes.