It is entirely by coincidence that the Columbia County Board of Education opens discussion of its gloom-and-doom budget options for next year during national Teacher Appreciation Week.

On a week in which educators are celebrated, far too many of them are feeling threatened by ever-tightening budgets and increasingly bureaucratic demands that have little or nothing to do with teaching children.

All of us have little voices in our heads. They tell us what to do and what not to do in order to keep our sanity and make sure we do the right thing. Those are the good voices. We also have bad voices that try to convince us the good voices are ridiculous and we should just go ahead and do what we really want.

Editor:

In the next few days, 18 elementary schools will close their doors for the summer. However, in the fall, only 17 schools will welcome students back for another term.

The Columbia County school system decided not to renovate three old neighborhood schools, instead consolidating them into two new school buildings that could house 1,000 students each. That figure is twice as much as any of the older three schools. Martinez and Evans Elementary would retain their school’s names and traditions, but Bel Air Elementary’s population would merge into the other two schools.