From Liz Clasen-Kelly of Council for Children's Rights, John Maye of Grandparents of America, and Louise Woods of Mecklenburg ACTS, on behalf of a coalition of public education advocates:

When the first school bell rings this week, there will be no science lab at Shamrock Gardens Elementary. Smith (now Waddell) Language Academy will have half the security staff of last year. Double Oaks Pre-Kindergarten Center, along with 13 other schools, will not open its doors.

These are just a few of the impacts of state and federal budget cuts on Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

But it could have been much worse. Based on the state's projected cuts to education, the school system could have lost nearly 500 teachers, 400 teacher assistants and many other positions. These positions, plus additional positions from last year's cuts, were saved through a concerted community effort by parents, advocates and community leaders, who worked to make education a priority in state and county budgets.

North Carolinians consistently rank education as a top priority, but our budgets and budget processes do not always match our beliefs.

The question, in part, is how much we fund education. With North Carolina slipping among the bottom states in per-pupil spending, that is certainly a question worth asking.

The question is also how we fund education. The timeline for the state, county and school system budgets is - simply put - backwards. School systems across the state, which have no control over how much money they receive, must pass budgets before knowing how much they will get from the state and county. In lean years, teachers are laid off, schools closed, and programs canceled based on funding projections. Once state and county budgets are finalized, typically once summer begins, school systems must quickly adjust to actual funding.

This convoluted funding method left CMS in a last-minute hiring push this year and put teachers in the lurch, having received pink slips in the spring only to be called back in the summer. The process left many - from parents to county commissioners - feeling "tricked" by CMS when projected job cuts did not materialize.

CMS projections were not, however, playing chicken-little, falsely warning that the sky was falling. School administrators did just what the state and county asked them to do: put together a budget based on projected funding.

When the dust settled from the budget debates, however, actual funding was millions more than projected. The difference? Parents and advocates led a successful community effort to increase county funding and decrease state cuts. The district's re-hiring of teachers is the direct result of citizens asking our elected representatives to act on community priorities.

Because of this successful effort, even though Shamrock Gardens' students will not have a science lab this year, they will have a media specialist, whose job was on the chopping block in May. Smith (now Waddell) might have less security, but class sizes will not increase. Double Oaks Pre-K Center might be closed, but the Bright Beginnings pre-kindergarten program will serve the same number of four-year-olds.

We know that a strong education system helps build a prosperous future. Let us all be proud that by advocating for our public schools, we can make a difference!