Thank you, Jack.  I'd like to address the notion that we can't afford this school budget.  

While I was waiting to come to this meeting I was reading.  Thucydides wrote a great account of the history of his city as it unfolded in his lifetime.  When I put the book down to get in the car, I was at the place where the citizens of Athens gathered in their assembly to discuss their treaty obligations to Corinth.

People in Athens came to their Assembly 2400 years ago to talk over the problems of the day, just as we are doing today.  Listening to you now, I felt that I was doing something with a tradition thousands of years old.  They didn't let everyone into the assembly in Athens, just people they thought had judgment enough to be counted on to make a good decision.  Long ago in this country, though conservatives fought the notion, it was decided to aim for 100% literacy, mostly for this purpose right here.  The idea was that a citizen had to read and be informed to even be a good citizen.

Somewhat later in this country the idea of publicly funded education took hold, though, again, conservatives fought the notion.  We even made it mandatory.  You can't have a truant child, by law, unless you can show the court that some equivalent to public education is being provided.  Your grandparents and parents lived in a town, paid their taxes, and you folks here now got the advantage of it.  Using that education, you are now informed enough to have decent judgment about whatever might need to be done in town.  

I remind you that you'll get old one day, and if a crop of kids have grown up around you who are ignorant, there's lots of ways they could sit in a meeting like this one and bring to ruin a lot of the things you know are important.  They could perhaps never have picked up properly the idea of the common good, of how responsible citizens have to work together.  They could be swayed, maybe, by someone with a chip on her shoulder and a gift for speeches to make people mad.  Ignorant people can cost everyone, by letting crumble all the things careful citizens have slowly built, just because no one ever told them any better.

And it's your turn.  You're grown up now, the gray is coming into your hair.  It's your turn now to live in a town, pay your property taxes, and fund this school budget.  

Yes, it costs more this year.  Bread costs more, gas costs more, heat costs more.  It isn't a great surprise that the schools are going to cost more.  I'm sure the generation which gave you your education griped and grumbled about how much it cost, too, but they did it.  Now it's up to you to man up and do what needs to be done.