Every student has been faced with the same situation at one point during their time here at BV: The student walks into a core class, only to find it packed to the brim with teenagers. Learning seems to be a secondary concern to the teacher ­­— it takes most of their energy just to get the class to quiet down.

Students tap away on their cell phones, loudly chatting to groups of friends about the latest argument on Jersey Shore or how angry they are about Steve Carell leaving The Office.

Being stuffed in a classroom with other students is all too common. The Kansas State Legislature is planning to only make it worse, by cutting the budget and forcing schools to raise class sizes by 2-3 students.

The Kansas Senate recently passed its amendments to the state budget. Kansas faced a budget deficit of $500 million. Legislators knew they needed to cut money from somewhere. Unfortunately, those cuts are going to directly affect us.

The budget is set at $14 billion, a large amount, but it actually cuts $226 for every K-12 student in Kansas.

At the same time, Kansas is refusing to remove the caps on raising taxes by shutting down Shawnee Mission’s lawsuit attempt to raise property taxes to bring more money into their school district. Similar to BV’s, Shawnee Mission parents consistently voted to raise property taxes.

This wasn’t something the community was split on or arguing about.

The community came together to try and bring more money into its hard-pressed school district budget.

Despite being in a well-off community, BV can only bring in a limited amount of public funding, but has to deal with the same budget issues as every other school district.

This is simply not acceptable. Education in America is already lacking. This would create a system where students could simply put their heads down and slide on by.

With that increased amount of students, teachers can’t give everyone the focus they need. They have to spend more and more time grading papers and tests. Teachers would have to cover too many bases and those who need the most one-on-one time will fall through the cracks.

We understand the district office has everyone’s best interest in mind. They have to be tight with their money. But there has to be another option — some other way to save money and not take it out on the students and teachers.

However, 2-3 students per class is bad for each student’s education. Not only do students lose individual help, but also teachers will have more work and less time to give each student feedback on their progress.