Recently, Hawaii, like many other states, has been buckling under a $1 billion deficit. The state’s Department of Education has had to cut $468 million from its budget to compensate for the budget shortfalls. Public school teachers have been required to take a 7.9 percent pay cut and Governor Linda Lingle, with State Teachers Association, adopted a measure allowing 17 furlough days each for the next two years. Now students, who formerly spent 180 days in the classroom each year, will be spending only 163 days with underpaid teachers scrambling to make up the lost hours.

With our current budget crisis, California is not far from a similar situation. Already, the California State University, the largest system of senior higher education in the country, has been forced to adopt furlough days following a $584 million cut to the CSU’s general fund support for the 2009-10 academic year. The problems facing education are no longer local. From California to Michigan, schools across the country are falling short. We need federal action and innovative solutions to revitalize our education system now, before more states follow Hawaii’s path.

That’s why Felton’s platform centers around an education plan that focuses not on the special interests, but on children. When the focus is on those for whom the education system exists, it is the last place we go with the red marker. Felton has taken a stand that it is more urgent than ever that we increase education funding now, rather than kick the bucket down the road with expenses on prisons and social services. We cannot afford to compromise with four-day school weeks and salary cuts for teachers when our children deserve much more.